, says Bauer: they might give an energy firm new insight into how wind speeds are expected to change across the North Sea in coming years, for example. Bauer likes to call the digital twins an “interactive space” to explore “this metaverse of climate data”. By metaverse, he doesn’t mean
, which the EU eventually cancelled. But this time it’s happening. The budget was approved last December, meaning funding is guaranteed to the end of 2024, yet the whole enterprise should run for up to 10 years.The level of detail it will offer at a local level – the resolution – should be greater than most climate change modelling today.
Ted Shepherd at the University of Reading, UK, says the new system should offer more realistic levels of detail for extreme weather events than current climate models. But he’s concerned that expectations for how accurately the digital twins can project climate change’s future impact might be unrealistically high.
No. Next question.