New research published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews by scientists from the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Centre and the University of Central Florida has found that ocean and nearshore disturbances caused by extreme weather events have exposed “hot spots” along the transglobal cable network, thereby increasing the risk of internet outages as climate change has compromised the flow of digital information through fiber-optic cables lining the sea floor .
A damage of such magnitude would disrupt activities of governments, the private sector and nonprofit organizations whose operations rely on the safe and secure flow of digital information and the researchers said that intensifying tropical cyclones in the northern Pacific Ocean are already stressing submarine cables off the coast of Taiwan while melting glacial and sea ice “are profoundly changing ocean conditions more rapidly than many other places on Earth” in strategically important polar regions.
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“Our analysis clearly stresses the need to carefully plan cable routes and landing station locations factoring in a range of local hazards and how those are affected by climate change,” co-author Thomas Wahl, an associate professor in UCF’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering, was quoted as saying in a release.
The findings from the study that has collaborators that include the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Southampton, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and the International Cable Protection Committee, are drawn from analysis of peer-reviewed data sets on seafloor cable infrastructure and its vulnerability to climate change.
“We find that ocean conditions are highly likely to change on a global basis as a result of climate change, but the feedbacks and links between climate change, natural processes and human activities are often complicated, resulting in a high degree of geographic variability,” the researchers wrote.
They said such risks will be particularly compounded by sea-level rise as swelling oceans increase hazard severity, create new hazards and shift hazard risk to new areas.
At the same time, the global subsea cable network continues to expand. Real-time information from the firm TeleGeography shows a vast network of trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific lines from the United States to Europe and Asia. Other continents, such as South America and Africa, are ringed by submarine cables that connect to shorelines at thousands of interconnection points.
Although natural disasters that damage subsea cables are “fewer in number than those linked to human activities,” instances of cable damage from natural hazards “can synchronously damage multiple cable systems across large areas, isolating whole regions,” the authors wrote.
Story was adapted from EE News
