2024 is a dazzling year for Earth’s digital twin.
Nvidia launched Earth-2, a digital twin platform for Earth's climate, in March. The first phase of the European Union's DestinE (full name: Destination Earth) also went online in June. Data will continue to be added to become a "complete" digital twin of the Earth by 2030.
With the help of AI, the development of digital Earth twins is accelerating. Typhoon path forecasts are becoming faster and more accurate; scientists can replicate landslide simulations to identify optimal disaster prevention methods; and businesses can calculate the optimal locations for wind farms. The European Union even plans to use AI to protect biodiversity, assess the social and economic impacts of climate change, and even inform policy adjustments.
How to build Earth-2? Nvidia experts tell you
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited Taiwan in May, creating a "Nvidia whirlwind" wherever he went. His speech at National Taiwan University in June brought Earth-2, known as one of the "most ambitious projects in human history," to the world stage.
Earth-2 uses artificial intelligence and high-resolution interactive simulations to accelerate climate and weather forecasting, increasing the resolution of satellite imagery by more than 12 times. It can also reduce the error in typhoon prediction range from the original 25 kilometers to 2 kilometers, allowing for more accurate prediction of landfall locations.
Digital twins are not new, having first been applied in manufacturing in 2002. With the development of AI, their application has exploded. A digital twin is a virtual replica of a physical product. For example, from the design and production stages of an aircraft, a virtual aircraft is created using the same details and processes, and flight data is recorded in this replica. When the original aircraft requires major overhauls, testing and adjustments can be performed on the replica before the actual aircraft is actually applied. A similar principle applies to digital twin factories.
Earth-2 emphasizes rapid climate and weather forecasting, but weather systems are extremely complex. Virtually replicating Earth's weather system requires not only high-speed computing power and AI technology, but also extensive training data sets. Dion Harris, director of product marketing at Nvidia Data Center, told Live Science that the training data includes hourly forecasts of land, atmospheric, and ocean climate variables. Only by integrating hundreds of observations can Earth-2 reconstruct Earth's weather and climate over the past 50 years or so.
The Nvidia team explained that Earth-2 can not only help predict typhoons, but also be used for long-term climate change forecasts. To achieve this, Earth-2 must first rapidly analyze massive data streams, including greenhouse gas emissions, temperature changes, the global water cycle, land use changes, and ocean chemistry, where Nvidia's supercomputing capabilities are perfectly suited.
The EU's ambition: a "complete" digital twin of the Earth
DestinE will launch in 2022. The EU's ambition is not only to analyze climate change and extreme weather events, but also to use digital twins to analyze their social and economic impacts and identify adaptation and mitigation strategies. Beyond applications in biodiversity conservation, water resource management, and renewable energy, it could even inform EU policymaking and implementation.
DestinE uses Europe's vast data lake for simulations and forecasts. This data includes information from the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and the European Centre for Mesoscale Weather (ECMWF), as well as ground-based Internet of Things (IoT) data and social and economic data provided by governments.
"DestinE" will complete the core platform, data lake, and two digital twin models this year, and will gradually add data on oceans, cities, and forests to become a "complete" digital twin of the Earth by 2030.
Want to know how heat waves will affect food security? How widespread will flooding be? Where is the best place to place a wind farm? Digital Twin Earth will tell you the answers.
References：
*Live Science (April 16, 2024),AI-powered ‘digital twin’ of Earth could make weather predictions at super speeds
*Space.com (March 5, 2024),Scientists made a ‘digital twin’ of Earth to simulate possible natural disasters
*The Next Web (June 10, 2024),EU launches AI-powered ‘digital twin’ of the Earth
*European Commission,Destination Earth
*NVIDIA,earth-2
Sources: Environmental Information Center
