The European Commission today launched the first version of Destination Earth (DestinE), an AI-powered simulator to improve the accuracy of climate forecasts.
The first version of DestinE includes two models: one for extreme weather events and another for climate change adaptation. These models will monitor, simulate and predict the Earth's climate in detail.
“DestinE means we can monitor environmental problems that can help us predict future scenarios – like never before,” said EU Antitrust Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
DestinE is powered by Europe's high performance computing (EuroHPC), including the LUMI supercomputer in Finland. The developers have combined this with AI to increase data processing speed.
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“This first phase shows how much we can achieve when Europe pools its scientific excellence and its enormous supercomputing capacity,” said Vestager.
However, the overall model is expected to evolve over time, with a complete digital twin of the Earth expected to be available by the end of this decade.
Digital twin of the earth
Do you want to test how a heatwave will affect food security? Or whether a storm will flood a particular city? Or where to best place your wind farm? All of this could be possible with the digital twin of the Earth.
The digital twin will draw on a vast pool of data for its predictions and simulations. This information will come from satellites such as those of the EU's Copernicus programme. It will also come from IoT sensors on the ground as well as a wealth of government data.
To complete the digital twin of the Earth, future versions will include data from oceans, cities, forests – basically any place on our planet that scientists can analyze.
The EU first launched DestinE in 2022. Over 300 million euros have been made available for the construction of the digital twin.
Today's launch marks the end of the first phase and the beginning of the second phase, each of which will receive funding of over 150 million euros.
The financing of the third phase is subject to the approval of the final Digital Europe 2025-2027 programme, which is currently being prepared.
The EU is far from the only organisation working on this type of technology. In March Nvidia introduced its own digital twin of our planet called Earth-2. According to the chip giant, the Taiwanese government is already using the model to better predict when typhoons will hit land.
