Spain began the new year battling Storm Filomena, a once-in-a-generation weather event that blanketed Madrid in snow and paralyzed the economy. Health workers were stranded, supermarkets shut, and the army was called in. At least four people died. “Now, consider a government or company that knew two weeks ago there was a risk that this would happen,” said Francisco Doblas-Reyes, a physicist at Barcelona’s Supercomputing Center. “Knowing the risk that a 1-in-20-year event was going to happen would have given more possibilities to prepare.”
Doblas-Reyes and his team are working on complex models that they hope can better detect the next Filomena, a job that’s become increasingly important as climate change makes weather more unpredictable — and extreme. The data collected by European satellites is at the heart of the continent’s multibillion-euro Destination Earth program seeking to develop the world’s best digital simulation of Earth.
As U.S. climate research took a backseat to human spaceflight, deep-space exploration and the creation of a military force for outer space during the Trump administration, European scientists have focused on finding new ways to understand the changing atmosphere. In November, the EU launched a satellite on board a NASA-backed Space X rocket that can track miniscule changes in sea levels, down to the millimeter. New projects are underway to monitor freshwater flows and greenhouse gas emissions, technical challenges akin to forecasting how a drop of ink will disperse inside a choppy pond.
By using artificial intelligence and supercomputers, the first digital-twin simulations of Earth could be ready by 2028, according to Aschbacher. The ESA’s data is publicly available, allowing everyone from the scientists in Barcelona to farmers and insurers to improve their own models at the same time. “If you really want to make it useful, you have to make sure the information is available in a way that people can visually use it,” he said. “What the people really want to know isn’t just the status of today but a projection of the future.”