14 Apr 2026

Destination Earth climate digital twin runs global simulations at 5 to 10 km

Climate and environmentExperimental cross-disciplinary systems
AI illustration · Illustrative scene, not a photograph of the specific device or experiment.

What was demonstrated

A Geoscientific Model Development paper published on 14 April 2026 describes the Destination Earth Climate Change Adaptation Digital Twin. Its abstract gives spatial resolutions of 5 to 10 km and hourly outputs, but no cost or throughput figures. The body text reports a current throughput of about 0.5 simulated years per wall-clock day at 5 km, with around 200 computing nodes for the 5 km runs and around 100 for the 10 km runs. It also says a 20-year 5 km ICON simulation typically needs about 0.6 million GPU hours. The simulations run on the LUMI and MareNostrum 5 supercomputers. Atmosphere and land output is hourly, and ocean and sea-ice output is daily.

Why it matters

The paper describes an operational system for multi-decadal, multi-model global climate projections at local granularity, which could help planners test local risks. ECMWF's announcement of 1 February 2026 confirms a third programme phase running from June 2026 to June 2028, but the sources give no funding amounts.

Caveats

  • A 20-year 5 km run is costly. Throughput of about 0.5 simulated years per day is below the paper's target of about 1 at 5 km, which may limit how many long runs and scenarios can be produced.
  • Higher-frequency output that some applications request is not yet possible, and the streaming window has so far been up to one year, according to the paper.
  • The paper compares historical simulations (1990 to 2014) with surface station observations and ERA5 reanalysis (Section 5). This record does not quote validation scores, so the accuracy of the simulations is not summarised here.
  • The cost and throughput figures come from the body text, not the abstract, and reflect the paper's own simulations on the LUMI and MareNostrum 5 supercomputers.

Technology profiles

Sources

  1. peer reviewed paper
    The Destination Earth digital twin for climate change adaptation
    Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes. Geoscientific Model Development, 14 Apr 2026. DOI: 10.5194/gmd-19-2821-2026.
  2. news
    Third phase of Destination Earth confirmed
    ECMWF, 1 Feb 2026.

Last reviewed 21 Oct 2026.