EUMETSAT takes key role in innovative project to model the Earth system
An image of the Earth taken by EUMETSAT’s Meteosat-11 satellite at 09:12 CET this morning
An image of the Earth taken by EUMETSAT’s Meteosat-11 satellite at 09:12 CET this morning
EUMETSAT’s contribution involves providing seamless access to massive amounts of data via a multi-cloud data lake.
26 September 2023
03 November 2021
Europe’s meteorological satellite agency, EUMETSAT, will take responsibility for the massive amount of Earth observation data underpinning the EU’s project Destination Earth (DestinE), that will model the entire Earth system.
EUMETSAT’s governing council has approved involvement in the project, worth €35 million to the organisation in its first phase. DestinE is a major plank in the European Commission’s digital and green agendas.
The ground-breaking digital twins initiative involves building virtual replicas of Earth systems, ultimately allowing greater insight into weather and climate phenomena and their impacts on society.
“EUMETSAT will have end-to-end responsibility for the multi-cloud data lake underpinning DestinE, including its design, establishment, and testing, as well as its operations and provision of an online inventory,” Director-General Phil Evans said.
“The data lake will incorporate and make accessible massive amounts of data from EUMETSAT’s own Earth observation satellite systems, as well as the EU’s Copernicus Sentinel missions, ESA missions, data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and, over time, other major data holdings in Europe.
“Seamless access to these data is critical to the success of the DestinE project.
“We are delighted to be contributing EUMETSAT’s proven expertise to this important European initiative, which will bring benefits to our Member States and Europe through unprecedented insights into weather and climate and a critical new tool for informed policy making.
“This is recognition by the EU that the infrastructures and expertise among Europe’s meteorological services will make a real and valuable contribution to this important initiative and the wider community.”
Evans said EUMETSAT’s role in DestinE reflects the organisation’s significant experience in meeting users’ needs by establishing systems providing near-real-time data and products and harmonised access across distributed cloud infrastructures and data holdings.
EUMETSAT, the ECMWF and ESA are the three agencies selected by the EC for the first phase of DestinE. While EUMETSAT is responsible for the data lake, ESA is responsible for DestinE’s core service platform and the ECMWF for the digital twins driving the weather and climate modelling.
