The impacts of climate change are redefining technological adaptation over many verticals and making a call to approach with strategic and proactive methodologies. The Digital Twin for Climate Change Adaptation is a cutting-edge project implemented within the Destination Earth program and powers a revolution in the way adaptation is planned.
The Digital Twin, therefore, hopes to deliver, with the power of advanced modeling techniques and unprecedented computing resources with a level of detail and foresight into the future consequences of climate change that would be unparalleled for policymakers, businesses and communities.
At the heart of this initiative is the work of ECMWF scientist Sebastian Milinski, who speaks on the cutting-edge technology driving the climate adaptation Digital Twin in a recent short film.
“The digital twin on climate change adaptation will produce multi-decadal simulations of the past and future climate at kilometer scale resolution to provide information from Global to Regional and National levels,” Milinski explained, stressing the exceptional level of granularity these simulations will offer.
Achieving such high-resolution simulations, however, is no small feat. Milinski acknowledges the challenges.
“Multiple Decades of kilometer scale simulations would need huge amounts of storage space,” he said. To overcome this hurdle, the Digital Twin introduces a groundbreaking concept: data streaming. “This consists in running applications within the digital twin workflow side by side with the global climate twin simulations and allowing the applications to access the data that they need while the digital twin is running,” Milinski added.
This innovative approach not only addresses the storage constraints but also enables seamless integration with sector-specific applications, such as hydrology models.
“User will, for example, be able to put their application — say a hydrology model — into the digital twin workflow where [it] will have full access to simulated precipitation to compute river flows,” Milinski elaborated.
By enabling real-time access to high-resolution climate data, the Digital Twin empowers stakeholders to proactively plan and adapt to the impending impacts of climate change. Milinski underscored the significance of this.
“With the Digital Twin on Climate Change Adaptation, we are pushing the boundaries in terms of simulation quality and Technical developments to provide easy access to high quality simulations of the future,” he said.
As the world braces for the challenges posed by a changing climate, the Digital Twin for Climate Change Adaptation stands as a beacon of hope, equipping decision-makers with the tools to navigate these uncertain times and chart a course towards a more resilient future.
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Featured image: Credit: ECMWF
