The Weather-Induced Extremes Digital Twin - sharpening the prediction of extreme weather and its impacts

The DestinE Digital Twin for Weather-Induced Extremes (Extremes DT) supports rapid decision-making in response to meteorological, hydrological and air quality extremes. It currently comprises a global component, producing simulations at resolutions of a few kilometres up to four days ahead. An on-demand regional component (On-Demand ExtremesDT) will follow in Phase 2, producing simulations at hundreds of metres up to two days ahead. This regional component will be able to be configured and activated on demand, enabling zooming in on extreme events happening in Europe. Several impact sector models for floods, air-quality and renewable energy will be added to both components. 

Simulations 

At the moment, global model output from the IFS-NEMO model is available and details are listed in the table below.

Daily global forecasts : The global component of the Extremes DT provides daily initialised four-day global forecasts with a resolution of a few kilometres (4.4 km) using the IFS. The global component allows extreme weather events to be simulated with greater accuracy than the ECMWF operational forecast, which has a resolution of only 9 km. It is complemented by a regional component that can be triggered to zoom in on extreme weather events over Europe, for which data are not currently disseminated.

For more technical details related to the simulation, please see here.

Although the data of the On-Demand ExtremesDT is not disseminated at this stage, the capability does exist and will start to become available as we move into Phase 2.

Data availability

Model output can be retrieved via the polytope service with examples on usage here.

Data is provided on an octahedral reduced Gaussian grid.

Data is provided on various levtype values, for different parameters. See the expandable tree below or the DestinE ExtremesDT Parameters page for more information.
The levtype values are as follows:

• hl : Height level field. The key levelist is used to specify the level in metres (e.g. 100). For parameters at height > 10m.
• pl : Pressure level field. The key levelist is used to specify the level in hPa (e.g. 1000).
• sfc : 2D atmospheric surface field. Note that this can be the earth surface, or other 2D levels such as at 2 metres or total column integrations.

For example, retrieve global forecast data, parameters "Surface pressure" (param 134) and "2 metre temperature" (param 167), for the forecast initialized on 10 April 2024 at 00Z and for hourly lead times from 0 to 6 hours :

request = {
    'class': 'd1',
    'dataset': 'extremes-dt',
    'expver': '0001',
    'stream': 'oper', 
    'type': 'fc',
    'date': '20240410',
    'time': '0000',
    'step': '0/1/2/3/4/5/6', 
    'levtype': 'sfc',
    'param': '134/167'
}

Modifying the request can then be performed based on the following structure of the available data (click the tree to unfold additional sections):