Can the Earth's climate be digitized? The EU believes so, with an ambitious goal of having a digital twin of the Earth ready by 2030. A digital twin means creating a digital copy of the Earth that can be used as a simulation tool.
The EU project is called Destination Earth and aims to monitor, simulate, and predict the climate and how climate change will unfold. It will be used, among other things, to assess how political measures will impact the climate. The model will be powered by artificial intelligence and supercomputers, while satellites power the climate measurements. No one has ever attempted to create a digital copy of the entire planet, so the challenge is broken down into smaller parts, with DTU modelling the large ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica.
12 years of expertise
Since 2012, DTU Space has been monitoring Greenland's ice sheets for the European Space Agency, ESA, providing new insights into how climate changes affect Greenland. This enormous amount of data will form the foundation for the digital twin of Greenland.
"We want to understand how Greenland's ice sheet contributes to sea level rise both now and in the future," says senior researcher Sebastian Bjerregaard Simonsen from DTU Space, who will lead the digital twin of the ice sheet.
"And because we have very long time series of measurements and understand the physics behind them, we can make much more accurate 'what if' calculations," he says.
