United Kingdom: Climate disasters endanger subsea cables

Mar 09, 2023 | Posted by MadalineDunn

New research from the UK's National Oceanography Centre and the University of Central Florida has found that thousands of miles of cables on the seafloor are increasingly at risk due to climate-related disasters. This, experts say, makes the world's internet connectivity vulnerable to outages as global subsea cable networks continue to expand. 

According to the researchers, polar regions, melting glacial and sea ice "are profoundly changing ocean conditions more rapidly than many other places on Earth." In the report, the researchers outlined: "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." Moreover, while these days networks are planned with greater attention to different vulnerabilities, many of the cable stations, where submarine cables terminate after coming ashore, were built prior to climate change being a primary focus for builders.

The report warned that going forward, when planning cable routes locally-variable drivers of hazard frequency and magnitude should be carefully considered and likewise, more thought should be given both to instantaneous events, in addition to "longer-term, sustained impacts," for example, seabed currents that circulate in deep water. "Multiple factors can combine to increase the risk posed to subsea cables, hence a holistic approach is essential to assess the compounded effects of both natural processes and human activities in the future," they said. 

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