Weather-Induced Extremes Digital Twin
What is the Extremes DT?
The DestinE Digital Twin for Weather-Induced Extremes (Extremes DT) supports responding and adapting to extreme events in a changing world. It provides a capability to produce tailored simulations and address what-if scenarios related to extreme events in a past, present and future climate, which complements existing prediction capabilities at national and European level.
The Extremes DT has a global component, producing global simulations at resolutions of 4.4 km kilometres up to four days ahead. An on-demand regional component (On-Demand Extremes DT) will follow later in Phase 2, producing simulations at 500 to 750 metres up to two days ahead for extreme events occurring over Europe. The global component is developed by ECMWF and the regional component is developed by a partnership led by Météo-France, involving 32 institutions in over 20 countries, including many national meteorological services (NMS) throughout Europe.
Factsheets on the Extremes DT
The DestinE factsheets provide a concise overview of the Extremes DT. The general factsheet covers a comprehensive description of different concepts essential for an understanding of the Digital Twin’s characteristics. Find additional technical information with an overview of available and planned simulations in the specialised fact sheet.
Click the photo to view the full PDF factsheet
General factsheet on Climate Adaptation Digital Twin
Specialised factsheet on Climate Adaptation Digital Twin
Brief overview
The Extremes DT builds a capability enabling the simulation of extreme weather events and their impacts two to four days ahead. It relies on high-resolution numerical simulations and their fusion with Earth system observations. It will complement existing capabilities for extreme weather and impact prediction, supporting national authorities in their mandates to respond and adapt to the consequences of extreme events.
The global component consists of four-days simulations at 4.4 km resolution with ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System (IFS), initialised once a day on LUMI since December 2023 (depending on EuroHPC availability, and queuing times). Météo-France and its partners develop a regional component, which builds on the ACCORD system and can be configured (e.g. for regions, event types) and activated to zoom in on selected extreme events over Europe at sub-kilometre resolutions (500 to 750 m). Several impact-sector models for floods, air quality and renewable energy are being integrated in its workflow.
The Extremes DT also helps to understand past and future extreme weather events, their change in a warmer climate, and explore the potential efficacy of adaptation measures in mitigating their impact. This can be achieved by exploiting the synergies of having the same underlying global model in the Extremes and Climate DTs to initialise, and drive, the regional component from either the global Extremes DT or from Climate DT simulations.
Models and simulations
The global component of the Extremes DT builds on the configuration of IFS-NEMO used operationally at ECMWF by further increasing the resolution of several components of the Earth System Model (atmosphere, land and waves) to a resolution of 4.4 km. The ocean component remains unchanged and is NEMO on the ORCA025 grid.
The global component of the Extremes DT provides daily initialised four-day global forecasts with a resolution of 4.4km (Tco2559 grid) and initialised from ECMWF operational analysis at a resolution of 9km.
Access the Extremes DT data
Extremes DT data can be accessed by registering on the DestinE Service Platform and requesting upgraded access.
Native model output at high resolution can be retrieved using the polytope service.
Various parameters for land and atmosphere are included in the data portfolio with a full list provided on the DestinE Extremes DT Parameters page. Examples for retrieving, analysing, and plotting data are provided here.
The Harmonised Data Access (HDA) offers access to entire DestinE Data Portfolio, via a single API, allowing to access the multiple diverse datasets included in the data portfolio. It also utilises the polytope API without modifying the digital twins data.
Various services available on the DestinE platform can be used to explore Extremes DT data.