The Download: The Surge of Data Centers in the Desert and Methods for Measuring Earth’s Elevations

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In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are leveling the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Several companies, including Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse, are all engaged in operating, building, or expanding large facilities in the area. At the same time, Microsoft has acquired over 225 acres of undeveloped land, and Apple is expanding its existing data center just across the Truckee River from the industrial park.

The race to accumulate computing resources for training and running artificial intelligence models, as well as for storing information in the cloud, has led to a significant data center boom in this desert region. It’s sufficiently distanced from Nevada’s communities to go largely unnoticed and, some fear, without adequate scrutiny.

This article is part of a series focusing on the energy demands and carbon costs associated with the artificial intelligence revolution.

A new atomic clock in space could assist in measuring elevations on Earth. In 2003, engineers from Germany and Switzerland began constructing a bridge across the Rhine River from both sides. Months into the project, they discovered that the two sides did not align. The German side was positioned 54 centimeters higher than the Swiss one.

This misalignment occurred due to differing methods in measuring elevation from sea level. To avoid such costly construction mistakes, in 2015, scientists from the International Association of Geodesy voted to establish the International Height Reference Frame (IHRF), a global standard for elevation. Now, a decade after its adoption, scientists are looking to update this standard using the most precise clock ever launched into space.

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