A new set of simulations of the Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin (Climate DT) is now available via the Destination Earth (DestinE) platform, alongside detailed information on the new simulations and how to access the data. This latest data release represents a significant step forward in producing high-resolution climate information within the European Commission’s DestinE initiative.

The DestinE Climate DT sets up an operational simulation framework providing globally consistent high-resolution climate and impact-sector information, at spatial scales where many of the impacts of climate change and extreme events are observed. It is implemented by a partnership led by CSC – IT Center for Science in close collaboration with ECMWF, reflecting a broad European collaboration across operational weather prediction, climate, and  supercomputing centres and academia.

The Climate DT is designed to complement existing climate modelling approaches by moving towards continuous, tailored production of climate information. It allows both simulating possible future evolutions of the climate system on multi-decadal timescales and assess “what-if” scenarios, supporting climate adaptation efforts across Europe. A recently published paper in the journal Geoscientific Model Development highlights the capabilities of the Climate DT and its latest developments.

A new set of Climate DT simulations is now available via the DestinE Platform, alongside a range of services that support the discovery, visualisation and analysis of the Climate DT data. In addition, a user guide providing details on the underlying models, simulations, data quality, as well as practical guidance on how to access and work with the data is also available. Users can explore detailed instructions for different data access methods, as well as notebook examples for data analysis, aimed at easing the use of Climate DT data and supporting its uptake for a wide range of climate adaptation use cases.

A new generation of DestinE Climate DT simulations

Over the past years, the Climate DT has seen significant development, leading to the release of a first complete set of simulations, produced with newly defined operational workflows that bring together upgraded global km-scale climate models, impact sector applications and a quality control framework. This second-generation of Climate DT data is included in the DestinE Data Lake, implemented by EUMETSAT, and available to users with upgraded access via the DestinE platform, implemented by ESA.

Two types of simulations have been produced and are now available: global multi-decadal simulations describing the climate evolution under a specific future scenario for the period 1990-2049 and global storyline simulations, exploring how extreme events, that occurred across the world during the period 2017-2025, would unfold in different climates. These simulations were enabled by strategic access to the EuroHPC capabilities and performed on two of Europe’s most powerful supercomputers, LUMI (Finland) and MareNostrum5 (Spain), part of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking network.

A first generation of Climate DT simulations produced using the three climate models underpinning the Climate DT – ICON, IFS-FESOM, and IFS-NEMO – was already available since 2024 for two time periods (1990-2019 and 2020-2040). The new simulations now provide a consistent dataset covering the period from 1990 to 2049, at resolutions of approximately 5km for the atmosphere and land surface and between 5 and 10 km for the ocean and sea-ice, and with hourly temporal resolutions. Data on the standard HEALPix grid can be accessed using the Polytope service developed by ECMWF, with several notebook examples included in the user guide.

Quality assessment is continuously carried out using the AQUA framework, which enables to evaluate the simulations as they run, supporting ongoing improvements in their reliability and robustness.

The global storyline simulations focus on all the weather events, such as heatwaves, storms, or floods, that occurred between 2017 and 2025 and explore how these would evolve under different climate conditions. Building on the success of the first generation storyline simulations, these new simulations introduce key improvements to enhance consistency and physical realism. Each scenario is run as a five-member ensemble to better capture internal variability.

Impact-sector data to be released soon

Alongside the new climate simulations, impact-sector datasets have also been produced and will be released in the coming months.

The set is fully integrated into the Climate DT workflow, allowing to translate climate data into indicators for areas such as onshore and offshore wind energy, wildfires, hydrology, and extreme precipitation as the climate simulations run. This enables more efficient and timely delivery of tailored information for climate-sensitive sectors, helping users assess risks and explore adaptation strategies based on high-resolution climate projections.

Supporting uptake of Climate DT data

With this release, Destination Earth continues to contribute to Europe’s digital strategy for climate action. By combining advanced climate modelling, high-performance computing, and impact-sector applications, the Climate DT is helping to transform how climate information is produced and used, supporting more informed decisions in the face of a changing climate. The Climate DT is complementing  established climate modelling efforts such as CMIP or CORDEX, and synergies with these initiatives are already being identified.

The newly developed user guide aims to support the uptake of the Climate DT data, by providing an overview of newly available simulations, models, parameters, as well as information on data quality, and guidance on how to access and use the datasets, including practical examples of how to analyse and use the data.

Find more details about the Climate DT simulations here.

The Climate DT, procured by ECMWF in the framework of Destination Earth is developed through a contract led by CSC-IT Center for Science and includes Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (CNR-ISAC), German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ), National Meteorological Service of Germany (DWD), Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Polytechnic University of Turin (POLITO), Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and University of Helsinki (UH), in close collaboration with ECMWF.

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 implementation of the two ‘digital twins’, the ‘Digital Twin Engine’ and the AI Earth system model, the European Space Agency (ESA) responsible for implementation the DestinE Platform, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), responsible for the implementation of the ‘Data Lake’.

We acknowledge the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking for awarding DestinE strategic access through a EuroHPC Special Access call to the EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI, hosted by CSC (Finland) and the LUMI consortium, Marenostrum5, hosted by BSC (Spain), which were used to produce the Climate DT simulations.

More information about Destination Earth is on the Destination Earth website and the EU Commission website.