Destination Earth digital twin to improve AI climate and weather predictions
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A view of the Digital Twin: an ultra high resolution 5 km simulation from the European Union’s Destination Earth initiative, visualising global cloud systems through liquid and ice water distribution with unprecedented clarity. Created by Andreas Mueller, ECMWF in the framework of the European Union Destination Earth Initiative with acknowledgement to EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.
view moreCredit: Credit: ECWMF Destination Earth.
An agreement on the third implementation phase of Destination Earth (DestinE), the European Commission’s initiative to develop a highly accurate digital twin of the Earth, has been signed between the European Commission and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The third phase will start in June 2026 and end in June 2028.
The DestinE digital twins enable the exploration of past, present and likely future climate and extreme conditions, including tailored ‘what if’ scenarios, such as Storyline simulations to replay past events and explore how they might unfold in a world 2 °C warmer. These help European and national institutions understand and better prepare for, and adapt to, risks caused by extreme weather and climate change.
Roberto Viola, Director-General of the DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission, said:
“Destination Earth demonstrates how Europe can transform major investments in supercomputing and artificial intelligence into concrete benefits for its citizens. By uniting world-class EuroHPC infrastructure, cutting-edge AI Factories, and Europe's unparalleled expertise in climate and weather science, DestinE strengthens our collective capability to anticipate climate and weather threats — and to act decisively on them. This is how Europe builds resilience.”
Since 2022, ECMWF has worked closely with ESA, EUMETSAT and more than 100 partner organisations, including many national meteorological services, to implement the Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin and the Weather-Induced Extremes Digital Twin.
These core components of DestinE have already progressed from early prototypes to modelling frameworks that routinely produce high-resolution climate projections and detailed simulations of extreme events.
As a key element of the DestinE system, ECMWF and its partners have also implemented the Digital Twin Engine that orchestrates the digital twin workflows and data flows on EuroHPC supercomputers and DestinE infrastructure and enables tailored access to high-resolution digital twin data across the whole system.
Since 2024 (Phase 2), DestinE has also seen a substantial expansion of artificial intelligence activities, including the development of machine-learning components for different parts of the Earth system (land, ocean, sea ice, waves and hydrology), and AI-based solutions that enhance interactivity with digital twin data.
In Phase 3, ECMWF and its partners will focus on operating and interlinking the Climate and Extremes Digital Twins, and the Digital Twin Engine, and developing the AI capabilities further:
“Phase 3 allows us to consolidate the digital twins while taking the next major steps towards delivering an AI Earth-system model, building on the combined expertise of ECMWF, our Member States and partners”, said Florian Pappenberger, Director-General of ECMWF.
“By integrating physical understanding with innovative AI approaches, we will further enhance Europe’s weather and climate prediction capabilities”, he added.
“This will support European National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and other public institutions in preparing for extreme events in a changing climate and protecting communities. At the same time, the combination of high-resolution, AI-ready digital twin datasets and Europe’s AI ecosystem—including the AI Factories —creates the conditions for a new generation of AI applications for weather and climate and supports innovation across European industry and the public sector. Together, these developments strengthen Europe’s leadership in trustworthy AI for environmental intelligence, while supporting preparedness, resilience and innovation across Europe.”
The developments include advancing and coupling machine learning based Earth system components towards an AI Earth system model that complements physics-based simulations and supports uncertainty quantification and rapid ‘what-if’ experimentation.
It also includes producing high quality, AI-ready datasets that can feed Europe’s AI Factories, strengthening links between supercomputing, AI and Earth-system science.
Together, these developments will continue to leverage Europe’s investment in high-performance computing and artificial intelligence and complement existing national and European services, developed in close collaboration with Member States.
Irina Sandu, Director of Destination Earth at ECMWF, said:
“Destination Earth is, above all, a collaborative European effort. It brings together expertise in Earth system modelling, software engineering, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence. By pooling resources and working closely with our partners, we are building capabilities that complement existing national and European services and help European institutions and Member States prepare for the challenges posed by climate change and extreme events.”
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Notes to editors
ECMWF Media contact:
For further information, please contact: pressoffice@ecmwf.int.
About ECMWF
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is a world leader in numerical weather prediction, providing high-quality data for weather forecasts and environmental monitoring. As an intergovernmental organisation, ECMWF collaborates internationally to serve its 35 Member and Co-operating States and the wider community with global weather predictions, data, and training. ECMWF’s research and operational center operates 24/7, focusing on medium- and long-range forecasts, and maintains one of the world’s largest meteorological data archives, including ERA5, funded by the EU Copernicus programme.
Our mission: Deliver global numerical weather predictions focusing on the medium-range and monitoring of the Earth system to and with our Member States.
About Destination Earth
The Climate Digital Twin, procured by ECMWF in the framework of Destination Earth, is developed through a partnership 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).
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 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 DestinE 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.
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