Underground Internet cables crossing coastal areas will be flooded by the rise in Ocean levels over the next 15 years, according to a new study.
In US cities such as New York, Seattle and Miami, thousands of kilometers of fiber optic cables are under threat. At any time, they can fail if no urgent steps are taken to protect them.
Transoceanic network cables are completely waterproof. For example, Marea's 160 terabit transatlantic cable, consisting of eight pairs of fiber optic cables, is protected by copper and plastic, supplemented by a waterproof coating. For most of the journey, the cable lies on the ocean floor, but near the shores it is buried underground to prevent it from being torn by ships.
Other cables are laid in a similar way, so they do not plunge into the water directly from the shore, but lie on the shore deep underground and from there go to the Ocean. As a result, even a small rise in the level of the Ocean will lead to the flooding of communication tunnels on the coast, which will have very sad and far-reaching consequences not only for the coastal regions of the United States, but for the whole world.
The pessimistic report came at a conference in Montreal where internet developers gathered to jointly assess the potential damage to cable networks and data centers from current climate change.
The speed at which the Internet could collapse simply shocked Professor Paul Burford and his colleagues when they investigated the effects of tides in coastal cities in the United States:
“When work began with the laying of network transatlantic cables, the engineers expected that the geography of the world would remain unchanged for the next, at least, hundreds of years.
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Then, when the ice began to melt and, as a consequence, the ocean level rose, everyone believed that the existing cables had at least 50 years in reserve, during which new ones could be laid, taking into account the changing climatic situation. But as it turned out, we do not have these 50 years!"
Most of the modern network infrastructure has been built over the past 25 years. Small cables leading to the Atlantic were laid along highways, which, in turn, run parallel to the coastlines. Engineers quietly buried all this without any thought about how the geography of the sea will change as a result of climate change.
In their study presented at the Applied Network Research Workshop, the scientists combined an extensive map of the physical structure of the Internet with predictions of sea level rise from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
First of all, the most vulnerable sections of the cable were identified, where even a small increase in sea level, which, according to NOAA, will occur over the next few years, is enough to flood the tunnels containing the cables. This all needs to be changed in the first place, although it seems that everything will have to be changed onshore: according to researchers, a total of more than 4,000 miles (6,500 km) of underground fiber optic cable in the United States will go under water no later than 2033. That is, over the next 15 years.
Prof Burford said first on the risk list are the so-called landing points of the most important and most advanced submarine Internet cables connecting North America with the rest of the world.
According to Professor Burford, “landing points” will be flooded within a very short period of time, if not sooner: recent hurricanes in the eastern United States have brought with them more than one flood and outlined how quickly things can happen. As a consequence, all of this should serve as a "wake-up call" for immediate action to protect the network from rapid climate change.