In a kind of pixelated cloning experiment that was meant to be an experimental model for Earth’s climate variables, computer scientists at ETH Zurich are trying to create a detailed digital pair of our Big Blue Marble.
According to a new study in the Computer Science of Nature, the goal here is for this double planet to be used as a sounding board to simulate and project Earth’s future environmental issues before they happen. This protection data could help researchers and policymakers by enabling them to predict dangerous climate change and its harmful consequences.
Leaping out of the goal of climate neutrality by 2050, the European Union has led a pair of progressive green enterprise programs called “Green Deal” and “DigitalStrategy.”
Part of this effort is the “Destination Earth” campaign starting in mid-2021, where international climate scientists and computer scientists will come together for a ten-year study using a digital model an ever-expanding Earth that maps real-world climate events taking place in space. and time.
“If you are designing a two meter high dike in Holland, for example, I can run through the data in my digital pair and find out if it is likely to be the dike is still defending against major events expected in 2050, “said Peter Bauer, deputy director for research at the European Center for Medium Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and co – founder of Destination Earth.
To keep the digital pair up to date and relevant, observation data will be incorporated into the simulation. In addition, this observational information traditionally used to simulate weather and climate simulations will be matched with new results related to human-related activities.
This includes, but is not limited to, the impact of humankind on water, food, and energy management, and the natural processes in the Earth’s ecosystem. Another key benefit of the Earth’s digital model is to implement better design strategies for our world’s freshwater and food supply, wind farms and solar plants.
“Destination Earth” is a joint effort by the ECMWF, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Agency for the Exploitation of Metabolic Satellites (EUMETSAT). Bauer and colleagues are in charge of climate science and meteorological angles of rape Earth’s digital brother.
Their work will be blended with the braintrust of computer scientists from ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS), in particular the efforts of ETH professionals Torsten Hoefler from the Institute for High Performance Computing Systems, and physicist Thomas Schulthess, Director of CSCS.
Currently, scientists believe that supercomputers based on graphics processing units (GPUs) are the most promising option for creating their digital Earth. They estimate that a full-scale digital pairing requires hardware repair with advanced algorithms, a system that requires around 20,000 GPUs and consumes nearly 20MW of total power.
Artificial intelligence (AI) also introduces this new Earth modeling initiative, as scientists plan to use it for data interconnection, representation of uncertain physical processes, and data compression. Ultimately, AI will allow researchers to accelerate the project on simulations and filter out the most critical information from large chunks of data.