This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A record-shattering drought has racked much of the United States. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned data centers set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found.

About two-thirds of upcoming data centers, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year.

Of 809 planned data centers, 517 are in locations that have been in drought conditions throughout the past year, according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which grades drought across four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing data centers are already situated in drought-affected areas.

More than 60 percent of the contiguous US is currently at varying stages of drought, the largest expanse for spring in modern records, with a particularly severe lack of rain and snow in the Southeast and West desiccating croplands and raising fears of a disastrous wildfire season.

“There isn’t enough water to go around. Now with this explosion of data centers, I think a crunch point is inevitable.”

Scientists have determined that the climate crisis, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is worsening the duration and intensity of droughts in the US.

But a stampede of new data centers are adding extra demands via their hefty energy and water requirements. Large data centers, some the size of small towns, can require up to 5 million gallons of water a day, equivalent to the water use of up to 50,000 people, in order to provide cooling to arrays of humming networked computers.

Overall, the multiplying data centers are set to demand as much as 73 billion gallons of water a year by 2028, up from about 17 billion gallons in 2023. Each 100-word AI prompt uses up roughly a half-liter of water due to the cooling needs of data centers, researchers have estimated.

“The AI industry is sprinting as fast as it can to gain market dominance, and the rest of us have to deal with a great increase in water demand in places already in drought,” said Christopher Dalbom, an expert in water resources law at Tulane University. “Even if there wasn’t climate change, we’d be feeling the effects of droughts more acutely, because water demand is going up and up, to feed more people and water more lawns and crops. There isn’t enough water to go around. Now with this explosion of data centers, I think a crunch point is inevitable.”

“I mean, ChatGPT is a pretty nice tool, but most people would prefer to have a beef steak.”

Companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are pouring billions of dollars into new data centers, with developers often drawn to dry, sparsely populated areas, due to the lower cost of land and generous tax breaks. Arid climates are also thought to cause the least amount of corrosion to equipment over time.

One of the world’s largest data centers, a complex twice the size of........

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