IBM did a lot of the early research in my hometown on cosmic ray errors. It essentially said that you were 5x more likely to see single bit errors in Boulder, Colorado than NYC, and ten times more likely in Leadville, Colorado. It was mostly due to the altitude differences, Boulder being approx 1 mile up, and Leadville being two. The latitude also mattered, though: La Paz is even higher, but is further away from the poles, so it was a safer place to put your data without ECC.
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IBM did a lot of the early research in my hometown on cosmic ray errors. It essentially said that you were 5x more likely to see single bit errors in Boulder, Colorado than NYC, and ten times more likely in Leadville, Colorado. It was mostly due to the altitude differences, Boulder being approx 1 mile up, and Leadville being two. The latitude also mattered, though: La Paz is even higher, but is further away from the poles, so it was a safer place to put your data without ECC.
https://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/50th/devices/zieg...