Only two and a half years after the launch of the initiative, Destination Earth features for a second time at a Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting. The initiative of the European Union to create a digital replica of the Earth system was introduced in 2022 during COP27.
For COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, an event organised by Finland’s CSC IT Center for Science, the Nordic Cryosphere Digital Twin (NOCOS DT) and the Nordic Council of Ministers, invited Irina Sandu, Director for DestinE at ECMWF to speak on the innovative DestinE digital twins.
The conference held in the COP29 Nordic Pavillion will explore the power of global and local digital twin technologies to support cryosphere monitoring and climate change adaptation. Tero Alto, Programme Manager at CSC – IT Center for Science will moderate the session.
Watch the event live on 16 November 2024 at 13:15 AZT (UTC+4 – 10:15 CET)
The fast-paced development of the DestinE initiative
On 10 November 2022, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for the Digital Age (DG CNECT) hosted an event at COP27 featuring the three entities entrusted to implement DestinE, ECMWF, the European Space Agency (ESA) and EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. Irina Sandu introduced the general principles of the digital twins and the digital twin engine, developed by ECMWF that at the time were only starting to be developed.
Today, the Destination Earth Platform is open to its first users and the Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin (Climate DT) and the Weather-induced Extremes DT (Extremes DT) are a reality, producing already promising results.
CSC-IT Center for Science is leading a partnership developing the Climate DT through a contract procured by ECMWF. Last June, CSC hosted the DestinE launch event in the LUMI supercomputing center in Kaajani, Finland, in which the European Commission Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager rang the bell marking the launch of the ambitious initiative.
Destination Earth is a European Union-funded initiative launched in 2022, with the aim to build a digital replica of the Earth system by 2030. The initiative is being jointly implemented under the leadership of DG CNECT by three entrusted entities: the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), responsible for the creation of the first two ‘digital twins’ and the ‘Digital Twin Engine’, the European Space Agency (ESA) responsible for building the ‘Core Service Platform’, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), responsible for the creation of the ‘Data Lake’.
We acknowledge the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking for awarding this project strategic access to the EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI, hosted by CSC (Finland), and the LUMI consortium, Marenostrum5, hosted by BSC (Spain) Leonardo, hosted by Cineca (Italy) and MeluXina, hosted by LuxProvide (Luxembourg) through a EuroHPC Special Access call.
More information about Destination Earth is on the Destination Earth website and the EU Commission website.
For more information about ECMWF’s role visit ecmwf.int/DestinE
For any questions related to the role of ECMWF in Destination Earth, please use the following email links: