Science and Technology Seminar: How the EC’s DestinE programme transforms environmental policy making – Digital twins as a step-change for Earth-system modelling and data assimilation

NOTE: this is based on an event page that was originally published on the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts‘ website. 

On 5 March 2021, ECMWF ran a seminar titled “How the EC’s DestinE programme transforms environmental policy making – Digital twins as a step-change for Earth-system modelling and data assimilation”.  

This seminar is part of ECMWF’s Science and Technology Seminar Series with talks that focus on the development of digital twins. In this first talk in that set, Peter Bauer provided an overview of the European Commission’s Destination Earth (DestinE) programme, showing the motivation, context, high-level architecture, and scientific and programmatic aspects.  

Nils Wedi then presented the recent results of 1km global simulations achieved on the Summit system, using the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS). He described how such simulations could contribute to a Digital Twin prototype. 

The European Union (EU) plans to be climate neutral by 2050. For its green transition, the EU plans to fund the development of digital twins of the Earth. For these twins to be more than big data atlases, they must create a qualitatively new Earth system simulation and observation capability using a methodological framework responsible for exceptional advances in numerical weather prediction. Developing next-generation models to produce high-resolution digital twins of the Earth is an area of focus in ECMWF’s Strategy 2021-30. 

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