The project develops high-quality, policy-relevant climate forcing datasets to support the European Commission’s Destination Earth (DestinE) Climate Digital Twin (Climate DT). Led by IIASA, with Climate Resource and the University of Heidelberg as key partners, the project produces harmonized emissions, greenhouse gas concentration fields, aerosol, volcanic, ozone, and solar forcings for two policy-relevant climate scenarios. It also develops an end-to-end framework concept for operational scenario-to-forcing workflows.

Purpose and Objectives

The project aims to:

  • Generate two fully processed climate forcing datasets aligned with DestinE technical specifications.
  • Produce consistent emissions, GHG concentrations, aerosol, volcanic, ozone, and solar forcings across all forcing components.
  • Ensure transparency and reproducibility through consistency with methods used in CMIP6 and CMIP7.
  • Develop an end-to-end framework outline that documents the full workflow from scenario selection to validated forcing delivery.
  • Provide the basis for a potential future operational service supporting continuous DestinE scenario updates.

The project will deliver fully validated, model-ready forcing bundles for high-resolution climate simulations (30 km down to 5 km spatial resolution), with a global scope tailored to European climate policy and DestinE Climate DT simulations.

Methodology

The project combines established CMIP methodologies with new scenario-specific workflows:

  • Scenario Selection: Choose two policy-relevant scenarios and refine with ECMWF input.
  • Emissions Harmonisation & Gridding: Apply open-source software to generate spatially explicit emissions at the required resolutions.
  • GHG Concentration Fields: Use MAGICC model runs and ScenarioMIP protocols covering 43 greenhouse gases.
  • Aerosol Forcing: Prepare scenario-consistent “simple plumes” aerosol forcing.
  • Volcanic Forcing: Translate plausible eruption trajectories into SO₂ injection pathways and stratospheric aerosol properties.
  • Ozone & Solar Forcing: Adapt CMIP7 ozone projections and scenario-independent solar variability datasets.
  • Quality Control: ECMWF-compliant validation and full documentation for all datasets.

Key Outputs

  • Two complete, CMIP-aligned forcing datasets ready for Climate DT use, with harmonized, CF-compliant NetCDF bundles covering:
    • Emissions
    • GHG concentrations
    • Aerosols
    • Volcanic forcings
    • Ozone and solar inputs
  • Quality control reports and technical documentation.
  • End-to-end framework outline and an optional operationalization concept.
  • Peer-reviewed publication summarizing methodological advances.

IIASA’s Role

IIASA leads the project and:

  • Coordinates all scientific and administrative activities.
  • Harmonizes emissions and prepares volcanic, ozone, and solar forcings.
  • Leads development of the end-to-end framework concept.
  • Ensures rigorous quality control, documentation, and engagement with ECMWF.

The project builds on IIASA’s leadership in global scenario development, including coordination of CMIP7 emissions and concentrations processing and hosting the IPCC AR6 Scenario Explorer.

The project is headed by Principal Investigator Alexander Nauels, with Lydia Gericke acting as the responsible Project Officer.

Contacts at IIASA

Alexander Nauels profile picture

Alexander Nauels

Senior Research Scholar (ICI)

Lydia Gericke profile picture

Lydia Gericke

Project Officer (ICI)

Consortium Partners

  1. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (Austria) – Lead institution; emissions, volcanic, ozone & solar forcing; scenario and end-to-end framework concept development.
  2. Climate Resource (Germany) – Greenhouse gas concentration fields; data quality control.
  3. University of Heidelberg (Germany) – Aerosol forcing generation using the simple-plumes approaches

Funding Acknowledgements

Funding Acknowledgements © Funding Acknowledgements

Funded by the European Union (EU). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU, the European Commission (EC) or ECMWF. Neither the EU and the EC nor ECMWF can be held responsible for them. The project is funded under contract ECMWF DE_341_IIASA as part of the wider Destination Earth Programme of the EC.