A group of European researchers-climatologists with the participation of experts from ETH Zurich demonstrated a unique project to create a digital twin of the Earth. According to experts, the implementation of this project will help to study all climatic changes on the planet.
The Destination Earth project is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2021. The goal of the project is to improve the level of preparedness of countries for extreme changes on Earth.
The developers intend to create not only a copy of our planet, but also programs that display temporal and spatial climatic phenomena. In the process of creating a unique system, experts will add to it the ability to track humanity’s actions on the planet, including the use of energy and water resources.
It remains to be hoped that the digital twin of the Earth, created by European scientists, will allow not only sadly contemplating global catastrophic changes , but will also allow finding a certain “lever” to regulate them, or at least slow them down.
The system is part of a ten-year project run by the European Union called Destination Earth. The goal of the project is to set humanity on the right path towards achieving net carbon neutrality by 2050.
“If you are planning a two-meter-high dike in The Netherlands, for example, I can run through the data in my digital twin and check whether the dike will in all likelihood still protect against expected extreme events in 2050,” Peter Bauer, Destination Earth co-initiator and deputy director for Research at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts explained in the ETH Zurich press release.
The Destination Earth scientists say they will work closely with computer scientists and engineers in order to build a model capable of simulating complex weather and climate conditions years in advance.
They will also, unsurprisingly use artificial intelligence and big data to “speed up the simulations and filter out the most important information from large amounts of data,” the ETH Zurich press release reads.
The scientists do, however, say that today’s fastest supercomputers may not be powerful enough for the system they aim to create, and that technology will have to catch up with their ambitious plans to tackle climate change with computing.
All of this brings to mind Wired magazine founding editor and futurist Kevin Kelly’s idea of a ‘Mirrorworld’ that would use augmented reality as a vehicle to create an entire digital representation of our world — unfortunately, in this case, the climate crisis is the driving force behind such an ambitious technological plan.
