2026-08-24T12:38:12-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）
作者：埃米特·莱昂斯 记者
埃米特·莱昂斯是哥伦比亚广播公司新闻伦敦分社的新闻记者，为哥伦比亚广播公司新闻所有平台报道并制作新闻内容。在加入哥伦比亚广播公司新闻之前，他曾在美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）担任四年制片人。
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2026年8月24日 / 美国东部时间下午12:38 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
英格兰斯劳—— 位于伦敦以西的小型工业小镇斯劳的居民告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，今年英国遭遇有记录以来最热夏天，持续的高温让他们难以忍受。但最新研究显示，斯劳的情况可能尤其糟糕，因为它毗邻全球第二大数据中心集群。
“斯劳非常热。每年我们都觉得这是最热的一年，然后下一年又会比去年更热，”在镇中心经营一家餐厅的纳比尔·纳瓦兹告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，当时他正经受着华氏90多度的7月热浪。
距离镇中心不到两英里的斯劳超大型数据中心集群的冷却机组发出低沉的嗡鸣，成为周边地区不间断的背景音。
这些冷却机组为宽敞建筑内的数百台计算机服务器调节温度，斯劳共有约40座这类建筑。机组将机器产生的多余热量转移到水或空气中，随后将热量排放或蒸发到外部大气中。
全球许多数据中心都采用这种运行方式，而所有这些多余热量可能正在造成“热岛效应”。剑桥大学科学家今年早些时候发表的研究显示，这会使当地平均气温升高3.6华氏度，局部极端高温甚至可达16华氏度。
“我们尝试开展规模化研究。我们开始查看全球范围内可识别的数据中心，共找到约1.1万个地点，”该研究论文的合著者安德里亚·马里诺尼告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，“我们发现的温度升高现象在全球不同地区都一致。”
尽管马里诺尼及其同事的研究未将斯劳的数据中心集群纳入其中，但他告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，该设施的庞大规模让这个人口稠密地区居民面临的热岛效应潜在影响问题更加严峻。
“越来越多的数据中心集中在同一片区域，”他说，“从这个意义上说，这是一场实验——所有这些彼此紧邻的不同设施产生的复合效应尚未得到研究。”
哥伦比亚广播公司将7月份数据中心园区内外的每日气象站数据与附近另外两个城镇温莎和尤克斯布里奇进行了对比，发现当月斯劳的平均气温仅比两地高出1摄氏度多一点。
“这里真的很热。我在这里不坐着风扇就没法待着，而通常在上午9点、10点不用风扇也没问题，所以可能和那些（数据中心）有关，”居住在数据中心园区附近社区的哈迪贾告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。她拒绝透露全名。
负责维护斯劳部分数据中心、并为亚马逊和微软等美国科技巨头提供服务的房地产公司数字地产（Digital Realty）的一位发言人告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻：“任何大型开发项目，无论是仓库、商场还是停车场，都会用铺装地面和建筑取代自然地表，从而加剧局部变暖。”
“我们通过高效运营设施、使用浅色屋顶和铺装材料来反射而非吸收太阳能、最大化绿地和树木覆盖、减少铺装面积，以此控制热量输出，”该发言人表示，“最终产生的热足迹比预期更小，也远优于行业平均水平。”
接受哥伦比亚广播公司新闻采访的专家一致认为，任何混凝土结构都会推高当地气温，但一些专家表示，斯劳这类数据中心相关的基础设施可能会显著放大这一效应。
“数据中心的不同之处在于，它们往往是巨大的块状建筑，就建筑环境而言，这是城市热岛效应所能遇到的最糟糕情况，”亚利桑那大学规划学副教授拉德·基思周四告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。
“随着全球各地这类规模的数据中心越来越多，我们需要更多证据来了解它们在不同地理和气候环境下排放了多少废热，”他说，“我认为另一个非常重要的问题是，数据中心建设是一场泡沫，还是会持续下去并长期存在？”
Is a massive data center hub heating up a town outside London?
2026-08-24T12:38:12-0400 / CBS News
By Emmet Lyons Reporter
Emmet Lyons is a news reporter at the CBS News London bureau, reporting and producing stories for all CBS News platforms. Prior to joining CBS News, Emmet worked as a producer at CNN for four years.
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August 24, 2026 / 12:38 PM EDT / CBS News
Slough, England — Residents of the small industrial town of Slough, just west of London, told CBS News the soaring temperatures have been difficult to bear this year as Britain records its hottest summer ever. But emerging research suggests Slough may have had it particularly rough, as it sits next to the second largest data center hub on the planet.
“Slough is very hot. Every year we think this is the hottest, and then the next year it gets hotter than the last,” Nabeel Nawaz, who runs a restaurant in the center of the town, told CBS News as he sweltered through a July heatwave with temperatures in the 90s.
The low hum of cooling units on Slough’s massive data center hub, less than two miles from the heart of the town, provides a non-stop soundtrack for the surrounding area.
Vents are seen on a data center in Slough, England, July 29, 2026. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty
The coolers regulate the temperature of the hundreds of computer servers inside the cavernous buildings, of which there are about 40 in Slough, transferring excess heat from the machines into water or air and then venting or evaporating the heat into the atmosphere outside.
Many of the data centers around the world work this way, and all that excess heat could be creating a “heat island effect,” increasing local temperatures by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, with extreme localized temperature spikes of up to 16 degrees, according to research published by scientists at the University of Cambridge earlier this year.
“We tried to work at scale. We started to look at data centers we could identify around the world and we found around 11,000 locations,” Andrea Marinoni, a co-author of the research paper, told CBS News. “The temperature increase that we found was consistent in different areas of the world.”
A crane works on an Equinix data center under construction, center, in Slough, England, July 29, 2026. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty
While the research by Marinoni and his colleagues did not include Slough’s data center hub, he told CBS News the sheer scale of the facility raises even bigger questions about the potential impact of a heat island effect for residents in the densely populated area.
“There are more and more situations where these data centers are concentrated in one single plot of land,” he said. “So, this is an experiment, in the sense that the compound effect of all of these different facilities very close to each other has not been studied yet.”
CBS News compared local weather station data on daily temperatures in and around the data center campus in July to two other nearby towns, Windsor and Uxbridge, and found Slough was just over one degree warmer on average over the course of the month.
A Google Maps satellite image shows Slough, west of London, England, where a large cluster of lighter colored roofs, on data centers and other industrial buildings, can be seen just west of the center of the town.
“It’s really hot. I cannot sit down without a fan here, whereas normally in the morning, 9 a.m., 10 a.m., it should be fine without a fan, so maybe it’s to do with that,” Khadija, who lives in a neighborhood right next to the data center complex, told CBS News. She declined to give her full name.
A spokesperson for Digital Realty, a real estate company that maintains some of the data centers in Slough and provides services to U.S. tech giants including Amazon and Microsoft, told CBS News that “any large development, whether it’s a warehouse, a mall, a parking lot, can contribute to localized warming by replacing natural land cover with pavement and buildings.”
“We keep heat output low by operating our facilities efficiently, using light-colored roofing and paving that reflect rather than absorb solar energy, maximizing green space and tree cover, and minimizing paved surface area,” the spokesperson said. “The result is a smaller heat footprint than you might expect and significantly better than the industry average.”
One of the world’s largest concentrations of data centers is seen in Loudon County, Virginia, with more than 53 million square feet of data centers in operation or under development. CBS News
Experts who spoke with CBS News agree that any concrete structure can increase local temperatures, but some say the infrastructure associated with data centres like the ones in Slough could amplify that effect significantly.
“The part where data centers are a little bit different is they are often a giant block, so as far as built environments go, it’s the worst you can imagine for the urban heat island effect,” Ladd Keith, an Associate Professor of Planning at the University of Arizona, told CBS News Thursday.
“As we see more data centers of this scale being built around the world, we need more evidence on how much waste heat is being emitted by them in different geographies and different climates,” he said. “I think one other really important question is, is this a bubble for data center building, or will it be sustained and continue for a longer time?”
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