# Earth Virtualization Engines (Eve)

Bjorn Stevens, Stefan Adami, Tariq Ali, Hartwig Anzt, Zafer Aslan, Sabine Attinger, Jaana Bäck, Johanna Baehr, Peter Bauer, Natacha Bernier, et al.

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## To cite this version:

Bjorn Stevens, Stefan Adami, Tariq Ali, Hartwig Anzt, Zafer Aslan, et al., Earth Virtualization Engines (Eve). Earth System Science Data, 2024, 16, pp.2113-2122. 10.5194/essd-16-2113-2024. insu-04729896

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Submitted on 10 Oct 2024

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Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE)

Bjorn Stevens<fnref n="1" />, Stefan Adami<fnref n="2" />,<fnref n="3" />, Tariq Ali<fnref n="4" />, Hartwig Anzt<fnref n="5" />,<fnref n="6" />, Zafer Aslan<fnref n="7" />, Sabine Attinger<fnref n="8" />,
Jaana Bäck<fnref n="9" />, Johanna Baehr<fnref n="10" />, Peter Bauer<fnref n="11" />,☆, Natacha Bernier<fnref n="12" />, Bob Bishop<fnref n="13" />,
Hendryk Bockelmann<fnref n="14" />, Sandrine Bony<fnref n="15" />, Guy Brasseur<fnref n="1" />, David N. Bresch<fnref n="16" />,¹⁷, Sean Breyer¹⁸,
Gilbert Brunet<fnref n="12" />, Pier Luigi Buttigieg¹⁹, Junji Cao²⁰, Christelle Castet²¹, Yafang Cheng²²,
Ayantika Dey Choudhury²³, Deborah Coen²⁴, Susanne Crewell²⁵, Atish Dabholkar²⁶, Qing Dai²⁷,
Francisco Doblas-Reyes²⁸, Dale Durran²⁹, Ayoub El Gaidi³⁰, Charlie Ewen³¹, Eleftheria Exarchou³²,
Veronika Eyring³³,³⁴, Florencia Falkinhoff³⁵, David Farrell³⁶, Piers M. Forster³⁷, Ariane Frassoni³⁸,
Claudia Frauen<fnref n="14" />, Oliver Fuhrer¹⁷, Shahzad Gani³⁹, Edwin Gerber⁴⁰, Debra Goldfarb⁴¹,
Jens Grieger⁴², Nicolas Gruber<fnref n="16" />, Wilco Hazeleger⁴³, Rolf Herken⁴⁴, Chris Hewitt<fnref n="12" />, Torsten Hoefler<fnref n="16" />,
Huang-Hsiung Hsu⁴⁵, Daniela Jacob⁴⁶,⁴⁷, Alexandra Jahn⁴⁸, Christian Jakob⁴⁹, Thomas Jung¹⁹,
Christopher Kadow<fnref n="14" />, In-Sik Kang⁵⁰, Sarah Kang⁵¹,<fnref n="1" />, Karthik Kashinath⁵²,
Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw<fnref n="10" />, Daniel Klocke<fnref n="1" />, Uta Kloenne⁵³, Milan Klöwer⁵⁴,
Chihiro Kodama⁵⁵, Stefan Kollet⁵⁶, Tobias Kölling<fnref n="1" />, Jenni Kontkanen⁵⁷, Steve Kopp¹⁸,
Michal Koran⁵⁸,⁵⁹, Markku Kulmala<fnref n="9" />, Hanna Lappalainen<fnref n="9" />, Fakhria Latifi⁶⁰, Bryan Lawrence⁶¹,
June Yi Lee⁶²,⁶³, Quentin Lejeun⁵³, Christian Lessig⁶⁴, Chao Li<fnref n="1" />, Thomas Lippert⁵⁶,
Jürg Luterbacher<fnref n="12" />, Pekka Manninen⁵⁷, Jochem Marotzke<fnref n="1" />, Satoshi Matsouka⁶⁵,
Charlotte Merchant⁶⁶, Peter Messmer⁵², Gero Michel⁶⁷, Kristel Michielsen⁵⁶, Tomoki Miyakawa⁶⁸,
Jens Müller⁶⁹, Ramsha Munir⁶⁰, Sandeep Narayanansetti²³, Ousmane Ndiaye⁷⁰, Carlos Nobre⁷¹,
Achim Oberg<fnref n="10" />, Riko Oki⁷², Tuba Özkan-Haller⁷³, Tim Palmer⁷⁴, Stan Posey⁵², Andreas Prein⁷⁵,
Odessa Primus⁵⁸, Mike Pritchard⁵², Julie Pullen⁷⁶, Dian Putrasahan<fnref n="1" />, Johannes Quaas⁷⁷,
Krishnan Raghavan²³, Venkatachalam Ramaswamy⁶⁶,⁷⁸, Markus Rapp³³, Florian Rauser⁷⁹,
Markus Reichstein⁸⁰, Aromar Revi⁸¹, Sonakshi Saluja⁸²,⁸³, Masaki Satoh⁶⁸, Vera Schemann²⁵,
Sebastian Schemm<fnref n="16" />, Christina Schnadt Poberaj<fnref n="16" />, Thomas Schulthess<fnref n="16" />,⁸⁴, Cath Senior³¹,
Jagadish Shukla⁸⁵, Manmeet Singh²³, Julia Slingo³¹,☆, Adam Sobel⁸⁶, Silvina Solman⁸⁷,⁸⁸,
Jenna Spitzer⁴³, Philip Stier⁷⁴, Thomas Stocker⁸⁹, Sarah Strock⁹⁰, Hang Su²⁰, Petteri Taalas<fnref n="12" />,
John Taylor⁹¹, Susann Tegtmeier⁹², Georg Teutsch⁵⁸, Adrian Tompkins²⁶, Uwe Ulbrich⁴²,
Pier-Luigi Vidale⁶¹,⁹³, Chien-Ming Wu⁹⁴, Hao Xu²⁷, Najibullah Zaki⁶⁰, Laure Zanna⁴⁰, Tianjun Zhou²⁰,
and Florian Ziemen<fnref n="14" />

<footnote n="1">¹Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³AI engineering GmbH, Berlin, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Istanbul Aydın University, Istanbul, Türkiye</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Leipzig, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹Destination Earth, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, United Kingdom</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³International Centre for Earth Simulation Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ), Hamburg, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵LMD/IPSL, CNRS, Sorbonne University, Paris, France</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland</footnote>
<sup>17</sup>Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss), Zurich, Switzerland

<sup>18</sup>Esri Inc., Redlands, United States

<sup>19</sup>Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany

<sup>20</sup>Institute of Atmospheric Physics – Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

<sup>21</sup>AXA Climate, Paris, France

<sup>22</sup>Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

<sup>23</sup>Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India

<sup>24</sup>Yale University, New Haven, United States

<sup>25</sup>University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

<sup>26</sup>Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

<sup>27</sup>Tencent, Shenzhen, China

<sup>28</sup>Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Barcelona, Spain

<sup>29</sup>University of Washington, Seattle, United States

<sup>30</sup>National Centre of Meteorology, Al Ain City, United Arab Emirates

<sup>31</sup>Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom

<sup>32</sup>MITIGA Solutions, Barcelona, Spain

<sup>33</sup>German Aerospace Center, Cologne, Germany

<sup>34</sup>University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

<sup>35</sup>Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany

<sup>36</sup>Caribbean Institute for Meteorology & Hydrology, Bridgetown, Barbados

<sup>37</sup>University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

<sup>38</sup>Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, São José dos Campos, Brazil

<sup>39</sup>Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

<sup>40</sup>New York University, New York City, United States

<sup>41</sup>Amazon Web Services, Seattle, United States

<sup>42</sup>Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

<sup>43</sup>Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

<sup>44</sup>MINE Inc., San Diego, United States

<sup>45</sup>Research Center for Environmental Changes – Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

<sup>46</sup>Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Geesthacht, Germany

<sup>47</sup>Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), Hamburg, Germany

<sup>48</sup>University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States

<sup>49</sup>Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

<sup>50</sup>Indian Ocean Center/Second Institute of Oceanography, Hangzhou, China

<sup>51</sup>Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan, South Korea

<sup>52</sup>NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, United States

<sup>53</sup>Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany

<sup>54</sup>Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States

<sup>55</sup>Japan Agency For Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokosuka, Japan

<sup>56</sup>Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany

<sup>57</sup>CSC – IT Center for Science, Espoo, Finland

<sup>58</sup>Global Arena Research Institute, Praha, Czech Republic

<sup>59</sup>Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

<sup>60</sup>Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

<sup>61</sup>University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom

<sup>62</sup>Pusan National University, Busan, South Korea

<sup>63</sup>IBS Center for Climate Physics, Busan, South Korea

<sup>64</sup>Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

<sup>65</sup>Riken Center for Computational Science, Kobe, Japan

<sup>66</sup>Princeton University, Princeton, United States

<sup>67</sup>AIG Reinsurance, New York, United States

<sup>68</sup>The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

<sup>69</sup>Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Eberswalde, Germany

<sup>70</sup>National Agency for Civil Aviation and Meteorology, Dakar, Senegal

<sup>71</sup>Science Panel for the Amazon, New York City, USA
**Correspondence:** Bjorn Stevens (bjorn.stevens@mpimet.mpg.de)

Received: 19 September 2023 – Discussion started: 22 September 2023

Revised: 11 February 2024 – Accepted: 19 February 2024 – Published: 30 April 2024

**Abstract.** To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. Earth Virtualization Engines is proposed as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change.

# 1 An international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change

Every day, more and more people are waking up to the consequences of Earth's changing climate. Changes in weather, water, and ecosystems are catching communities unprepared and scientists by surprise. These changes are highlighting how little we know about basic questions, such as for whom the monsoon rains may falter or even fail, or more generally whether warming is causing shifts in atmosphere and ocean circulations and how these may connect to more frequent and intense heatwaves, wildfires, and flooding. Climate change is also exposing a fundamental injustice, whereby those least responsible are impacted the most. Efforts to know more, and plan better, are severely under-resourced and inequitably distributed, deepening both the sense of anxiety and the injustice. This increases the disruptive potential of climate im-

pacts. Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE) responds to this new reality.

EVE envisions a world where everyone knows how climate and climate change affect them and where this knowledge empowers them to act. By generating entirely new and inherently better sources of information, EVE strives to catalyze a change in the broader ecosystem of data and services to deliver a just, equitable, and scientifically grounded basis for action.

EVE will be made up of international centers of excellence, each accessing outstanding computational and data-handling capabilities and each embedded within the rich and expanding landscape of climate-related data, experiences, and information. This will enable EVE to fill a data space with climate projections of much greater fidelity with local granularity, globally. It will link these projections, through a digital commons, to data describing the physical, biological, chemical, and social dimensions of the Earth system. EVE's digital commons will efficiently expose data to new

<footnote n="72">⁷²Earth Observation Research Center, JAXA, Tokyo, Japan</footnote>

<footnote n="73">⁷³Oregon State University, Corvallis, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="74">⁷⁴University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom</footnote>

<footnote n="75">⁷⁵National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="76">⁷⁶Propeller Ventures, Boston, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="77">⁷⁷Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="78">⁷⁸National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Silver Spring, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="79">⁷⁹Federal Office for Radiation Protection, Salzgitter, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="80">⁸⁰Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="81">⁸¹Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru, India</footnote>

<footnote n="82">⁸²Reiner Lemoine Institute, Berlin, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="83">⁸³Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="84">⁸⁴Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, Lugano, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote n="85">⁸⁵George Mason University, Fairfax, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="86">⁸⁶Columbia University, New York City, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="87">⁸⁷University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina</footnote>

<footnote n="88">⁸⁸National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Rosario, Argentina</footnote>

<footnote n="89">⁸⁹University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland</footnote>

<footnote n="90">⁹⁰Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Palo Alto, United States</footnote>

<footnote n="91">⁹¹Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Perth, Australia</footnote>

<footnote n="92">⁹²University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada</footnote>

<footnote n="93">⁹³National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Leeds, United Kingdom</footnote>

<footnote n="94">⁹⁴National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan</footnote>

<footnote>☆retired</footnote>
(e.g., generative artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality) methods of analysis and proactive information production. This will enable stakeholders to construct and interact with their own climate scenarios. EVE's technical ambition will strengthen the capabilities of all sorts of communities to command new technologies - built on scientific excellence, transparency, and openness across disciplines - to rise to the specific challenges climate change poses for them.

EVE will add modeling capacity beyond the reach of most countries, let alone existing modeling centers. This capacity is urgently needed to improve model fidelity, to assess impacts, and to integrate observations, globally. EVE's digital commons will provide access to software and infrastructure as a service that would otherwise not be available at the necessary scale nor aligned with emerging technologies. Through a commitment to international cooperation and capacity development, EVE's centers of excellence will extend, accelerate, and further open the generation of climate information of unprecedented quality and salience to enhance climate services, globally.

Each of EVE's centers of excellence will

- apply and advance the best available science to continuously grow, quality-control, and refresh a data space with small ensembles of kilometer-scale multidecadal global climate projections, juxtaposed with larger ensembles at coarser granularity;

- establish and maintain equitable access to a space of interoperable data and software through open and secure protocols aligned with global standards and conventions as part of an emerging ecosystem of planetary data;

- support and encourage innovative uses of data to generate information, particularly on local climate impacts, interactively expose them to users, especially those that would not otherwise have access, and develop standards and trust in their global use;

- cooperate with existing operational climate services and practitioners at all levels as well as research infrastructures and programs in the natural, information, and social sciences to amplify both their own and EVE's impact; and

- include a strong component of well-tailored capacity development, outreach, and exchange to enrich EVE with local knowledge and to bridge divides to train and employ new developers and users of climate information globally.

Each EVE center of excellence will require experts to maintain and advance state-of-the-art computing and data facilities to improve its models (physically and computationally), to support training and capacity development, and to engage with users to enlarge the public sphere of climate information. Meeting these requirements, alongside EVE's

computing and data demands, will require a funding rate of about EUR 300 million per year per center. Three to five centers should be sufficient to fill the data space of future projections and at the same time extend access to and engage with communities globally in using it. Global governance is key to the creation and sustainability of EVE. This could be in the form of an international treaty or coordination of self-governed centers by existing intergovernmental organizations. Independently of the governance model, EVE will be charged with maintaining consistent and open delivery of value to the widest possible user community and supporting constructive innovation through scientific excellence.

By comparison with the climate-change impacts it seeks to predict, EVE is asking for a tiny investment, all the more so that it takes advantage of an enormous opportunity, i.e., to confidently open the door to new worlds, worlds where water managers in Bhutan can, with confidence and trust, interactively explore the interplay between adaptation strategies and different scenarios of global climate change; where agriculturalists in northern India or managers of blue-carbon mangrove stocks in Bangladesh can anticipate the implication of Bhutan's choices; and where climatologists working in Cape Town can investigate how this all couples back to influence weather, water, and ecosystems globally. EVE will allow impact communities, who link ecological changes to patterns of weather and water, to leverage ever richer descriptions of present and past climates to scenarios for the future and to develop strategies for building resilience. EVE's ability to bring forth such worlds will come as much from the fidelity of its new models as from the power of its new technologies and its ability to equitably engage those who need its information most.

## 2 Frequently asked questions

### (1) Are scientists really “surprised” by the changes?

Yes, but not by every change, and by different changes in different ways. To be clear, climate science has long established why Earth is warming and has developed models that have explained its broad trends and contours. Scientists understand, in general terms, how some forms of extremes might change with warming. What is lacking is a specific understanding of such changes, which is needed to guide adaptation. Often this is because projected changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulations and patterns of precipitation differ from one model to the next for reasons we do not understand. While this makes it hard to form expectations and hence be surprised, there are a growing number of cases where models do agree with one another but observed changes behave differently, i.e., surprises. A prominent example is the persistence of La Niña conditions over the past half-century (the present El Niño notwithstanding); others include the slowdown in warming between 1998 and 2013, the rapidity of
Arctic sea-ice decline in 2012, and the seemingly unprecedented 2023 global temperature jump.

(2) What is meant by the “expanding landscape of climate-related data and information”?

In addition to the reanalyses and climate projections, which provide the vast amounts of globally gridded data needed to train the most advanced weather- and climate-related AI models, a great many organizations and agencies collect and disseminate other forms of climate-related data (e.g., from satellites, networks of ground sensors, gliders, floats, and drones to integrative ecosystem super-sites) that could greatly enhance this training. EVE will demonstrate how interoperability of data and software co-proximate to the computational capacity needed for the requisite machine learning can help users extract more information, with greater salience, from their own data, thus valorizing its collection and open provision. In this way EVE will expand the landscape of climate-related data and information. By providing this capacity through its regional centers of excellence, EVE will ensure local control and the equitable distribution and use of its capacity.

(3) What is meant by the phrase “local granularity, globally”?

There is no unequivocal definition of “local”, but many people would associate it with the environment that they can perceive with their senses and the space over which they typically move using their own power, if not a somewhat larger area. This defines local as about 1 km or perhaps between 0.1 and 10 km. Infrastructures are constructed, lives are lived, and impacts are felt on this scale of “granularity”. This has been appreciated for some time and has motivated work in climate services to “downscale” models with much reduced (100 km) granularity to a finer scale. Hence the phrase “local granularity, globally” emphasizes the importance of the kilometer scale for impacts, globally; for observations whose footprint is often on a local scale, globally; and for how important climate processes (ocean eddies, boundary currents, overflows and throughflows, orographic effects, and atmospheric convection) influence much larger scales, sometimes referred to as upscaling.

(4) Are there not already a great number of digital twinning activities? What makes EVE different?

There are a handful of related activities (e.g., Destination Earth, NVIDIA's Omniverse, the WCRP Digital Earths lighthouse activity, the DITTO program of the UN Ocean Decade). EVE goes beyond what was envisioned for these activities in three important ways. First, as a global effort, EVE is larger and broader in scope. Second, by locating its activities in regional centers of excellence, EVE helps en-

sure an equitable global footing, supports capacity development, and rewards local data provision. Third, whereas the aforementioned efforts mostly focus on twinning as a form of data provision, EVE additionally emphasizes AI integration to enable information provision. Depending on local circumstances and how existing twinning activities develop, an EVE center of excellence could, however, emerge as an outgrowth of one or more of these activities.

(5) Is EVE not adopting a technocratic approach to what is more fundamentally a question of human development?

No, quite the opposite. EVE is an exceptionally ambitious capacity development project – to access and use new technologies to understand Earth's changing climate. It is in this sense that EVE is similar to CERN, which in the years after World War II nurtured European capacity in basic science and serves as a technology accelerator to this day. Each EVE center of excellence can be seen as a local climate CERN to train, engage, and serve its stakeholders. This is not a statement of goodwill but rather the recognition that for climate information to gain trust and use and for it to best incorporate local data and knowledge, it must be organic. In this way EVE actually breaks with the current practice of training experts in the use and application of climate information produced elsewhere. By emphasizing the importance of local access to advanced technologies as part of a coordinated global network of regional centers, EVE will organically build local expertise across the span of disciplines associated with the creation and use of climate data, including the social and behavioral sciences whose insights will be essential for ensuring EVE's effective and responsible use.

(6) What role will AI play in EVE?

AI is one of EVE's core technologies. It can make models more performant and thereby fit for a greater purpose. It can also summarize and combine data to enable more salient interaction. EVE distinguishes between *AI inside*, to refer to what is done to help the models that create the training data perform better, and *AI on top*, which describes methods that learn from model output and auxiliary data. AI on top goes well beyond emulation to enable interactivity across disparate sources of data, e.g., to create new types of models and to give salience to the use of data. This is the game changer. One lesson of recent applications of generative AI is the disproportionate benefit of larger (AI) models trained on larger and more diverse data. This requires a very large computing capacity for both training and creating the training data. It means that AI, in particular AI on top, is not merely a part of EVE: it is one of the main reasons why EVE is necessary.
(7) Does EVE aim to replace existing modeling activities?

No. EVE complements and enhances these existing activi-
ties. EVE models will simulate the globe with local granu-
larity on timescales of decades to centuries, something exist-
ing models cannot do. This will help improve more coarse-
grained global models used to explore processes operating on
longer timescales, which EVE models cannot simulate. The
more coarse-grained models can likewise be applied more
conceptually to help rationalize processes that EVE models
do simulate. EVE will also enable a more consistent appli-
cation of regional models on similar (decadal) timescales or
yet more finely grained local models on shorter timescales to
support “wide scaling” – the investigation of local change to
the multitude of possible local interventions (e.g., water us-
age, urban planning, or energy infrastructure) – to broaden
the scope of training data available at EVE centers. EVE
will aid standardization and advance technologies to make all
models more effective, and EVE will create professional op-
portunities that justify enhanced training activities and thus
support centers specializing in modeling.

(8) Why three to five centers of excellence?

A smaller number of centers risks not meeting the ambitious computing requirements to fill the required data space with the required diversity in modeling approaches. Too few centers also make it more difficult to engage a sufficient breadth of users, thereby limiting access to data and expertise. More centers could help EVE be more inclusive, sample more climate trajectories, and engage more users. However, given each center's need to access a critical mass of human resources for model development and to innovatively develop and maintain infrastructure, etc., the reality of limited human and financial resources means that fewer centers, each with a higher profile, are advantageous.

(9) How much power would an EVE center consume, and is this sustainable?

EVE's use of high-performance computing requires sub-
stantial electricity resources. Based on the practice at some
of the world's leading supercomputing facilities, it is esti-
mated that each EVE center would need to access approx-
imately 50 MW of power. The computing resources need
not be sourced from a dedicated site but must facilitate in-
teroperability of software and data, maintaining computing
co-proximate to the largest sources of data. By focusing
on the development of just a few centers and concentrating
the powered delivery to access renewables and favor circu-
lar economies, e.g., through productive use of “waste” heat,
EVE will be an exemplar of responsible power production
and usage for power-intensive applications.

(10) How was EVE's budget estimated?

The EUR 300 million per center per year price tag was estimated based on the current budget of international organizations whose profiles overlap with parts of EVE's remit, and it anticipates a roughly equal split between funding for staff, running costs (mostly power), and investments (hardware procurements).

(11) Will EVE take away resources from existing efforts?

EVE relies on a vibrant climate research and services com-
munity and cannot be funded at their expense. EVE cen-
ters can be expected to employ some of the leading cli-
mate science, climate impact, climate services, and tech-
nologists worldwide, but in the end this will represent a
very small fraction of these workforces. Without simultane-
ously strengthening ongoing research activities, EVE would
lose access to trained staff, would become less innovative,
and would fail to adequately understand and communicate
its outcomes. Without simultaneously strengthening existing
climate services, EVE would lose its ability to connect its
data and information provision to the communities it must
serve, let alone scale this globally. EVE's operational use of
climate modeling and climate information provision can only
strengthen research efforts, as it creates new economies that
will draw from these efforts. Moreover, by bringing an oper-
ational culture to climate modeling and climate information
provision, EVE helps compensate for well-known shortcom-
ings (short-term focus in both career and idea development)
of academic culture.

(12) How would EVE ensure data quality and accessibility?

EVE would address issues related to quality assurance, trust-
worthiness, etc., of data (model output and observations) in
three important and novel ways. Foremost for data quality
and trustworthiness is that (i) the data are used, (ii) that their
creation is transparent, and (iii) that their creation and provi-
sion are responsive to those that use them – something sorely
lacking in the present provision of climate data. To guard
against hallucination in the use of AI-based information dis-
tillation, access to training data and the ability to revisit the
creation of training data – points (ii) and (iii) – need to be
ensured. Meeting these goals requires public institutions that
are accountable to their users. Only this can sustain the feed-
back loop that makes the data provision responsive to its use.
This is another motivation for creating EVE out of regional
centers of excellence.

(13) What would happen without EVE?

Without EVE, urgently needed information for adaptation and resilience building would be of inferior quality and much less accessible to those that need it most. Some of EVE's key
technologies and methodologies may be developed anyway but more slowly and then only by, and for, the few who can afford to do so. Climate information for business, finance, and global policy would continue to proliferate, but it would be less fit for purpose and it would lack a compelling tie to the best available science and ongoing efforts to improve standards, and becoming more inclusive would be more difficult. Without EVE, research laboratories would continue to explore the frontiers of computing but with diminished access, little participation from the Global South, and a reduced ability to link their findings and technologies to inform climate actions. Climate services and related communities would continue to do their best to exploit advances in the science to inform users but would be handicapped in their efforts. The operational aspect of EVE, the co-production of regularly updated information that matches the rapid pace of innovation, would be lost. The world would not be empty-handed, but it would be left with less, and less trusted, information, leaving many less resilient. Just as profoundly, a chance to engage many more people in new, and more equitable, economies at the nexus of emerging technologies and sustainable development would have been missed.

### (14) What is next?

The World Climate Research Programme Open Science Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, organized and hosted a TownHall on EVE, and EVE's ideas were presented at national pavilions during the recent Conference of Parties in Dubai. Building on and learning from these activities, we have developed an online presence that communicates the importance of EVE and promotes activities around the world that are actively working to realize EVE's vision. Across Asia, Europe, and North America a number of projects have started which in one way or another reflect EVE's technological vision and which are being developed by the EVE community into "EVE demonstrators". The big and ongoing challenges will be to (i) to transform these projects into an internationally coordinated operational activity and (ii) to enable those presently being left out, by virtue of their lack of access to the enabling technologies, to participate in EVE, on their own terms.

## 3 Summit participants

Many people contributed to the Berlin summit for EVE (https://eve4climate.org, last access: 18 April 2024). A discussion paper in preparation for the summit was downloaded more than 4500 times. A video presentation of EVE at the CONSTRAIN external assembly a week before the meeting was recorded and viewed more than 700 times. A forum was set up that collected extensive input from scores of people. Impulse for the working meeting was provided by a welcome from Bettina Stark-Watzinger, the German minister for research and education; Jensen Huang, founder and

CEO of NVIDIA, the most valuable semiconductor company in the world; Debra Roberts, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group II; and by many other distinguished speakers. Participants (https://eve4climate.org/participants, last access: 18 April 2024) in the working aspect of the Berlin summit came from diverse backgrounds. Joining the many participants working in the host nation (Germany) were representatives of every continent (other than Antarctica) and more than 20 individual countries. Participants ranged from students, like Charlotte Merchant of Princeton University, who led a breakout group, to Petteri Taalas, the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization. Many past and present leaders of the IPCC, heads of world-renowned research institutes, leading figures from technology, scientists from fields as diverse as sociology, behavioral psychology, informatics, and the varied fields of climate and climate-impact science, hydrology, ecology, and finance, as well as practitioners from climate services and operational services contributed and joined as signatories.

## 4 Why Earth System Science Data?

Fundamentally, EVE is about improving the quality and accessibility of Earth system data and doing so in ways that are just and equitable. Although many journals have higher profiles and are the more usual targets for such perspectives, none better reflects and practices the values of EVE.

## 5 Signatories

1. Bjorn Stevens, Director, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE (corresponding author)

2. Stefan Adami, Technical University of Munich/AI engineering GmbH, DE

3. Tariq Ali, Professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement and Partnerships, University of Liverpool, UK

4. Hartwig Anzt, University of Tennessee/Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, US/DE

5. Zafer Aslan, Istanbul Aydın University, TR

6. Sabine Attinger, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), DE

7. Jaana Bäck, Professor, University of Helsinki, FI

8. Johanna Baehr, Professor, University of Hamburg, DE

9. Peter Bauer, (Director Destination Earth for ECMWF, retired), UK

10. Natacha Bernier, Director of Earth System Science Research and Innovation, Dept. Science and Innovation WMO, CH
11. Bob Bishop, International Centre for Earth Simulation Foundation, CH

12. Hendryk Bockelmann, German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ), DE

13. Sandrine Bony, LMD/IPSL, CNRS, Sorbonne University, FR

14. Guy Brasseur, Director Emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE

15. David Bresch, ETH Zurich/MeteoSwiss, CH

16. Sean Breyer, ESRI Inc., US

17. Gilbert Brunet, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Panel, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), CH

18. Pier Luigi Buttigieg, Alfred Wegener Institute, DE

19. Junji Cao, Director General, Institute of Atmospheric Physics – Chinese Academy of Science, CN

20. Christelle Castet, AXA Climate, FR

21. Yafang Cheng, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, DE

22. Ayantika Dey Choudhury, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology – Pune, IN

23. Deborah Coen, Professor of History, Yale University, US

24. Susanne Crewell, Professor, University of Cologne, DE

25. Atish Dabholkar, Director, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, IT

26. Qing Dai, Tencent, Sustainable Social Value (SSV)/Carbon Neutrality Lab, CN

27. Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), ES

28. Dale Durran, Professor, University of Washington, US

29. Ayoub El Gaidi, National Centre of Meteorology, Presidential Court, AE

30. Charlie Ewen, Chief Technology Officer, Met Office, UK

31. Eleftheria Exarchou, MITIGA Solutions, ES

32. Veronika Eyring, Professor of Climate Modelling, DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics and University ofremen, DE

33. Florencia Falkinhoff, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, DE

34. David Farrell, Principle, Caribbean Institute for Meteorology & Hydrology, BB

35. Piers Forster, Professor, University of Leeds, UK

36. Ariane Frassoni, Brazilian National Institute for Space Research, BR

37. Claudia Frauen, DKRZ, DE

38. Oliver Fuhrer, Federal Institute of Meteorology and Climatology, MeteoSwiss, CH

39. Shahzad Gani, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, IN

40. Edwin Gerber, Professor, New York University, US

41. Debra Goldfarb, Amazon Web Services, US

42. Jens Grieger, Institute of Meteorology – Freie Universität Berlin, DE

43. Nicolas Gruber, Professor, ETH Zurich, CH

44. Wilco Hazeleger, Professor and Dean, Utrecht University, NE

45. Rolf Herken, MINE, US

46. Chris Hewitt, WMO, CH

47. Torsten Hoefler, Professor, ETH Zurich, CH

48. Huang-Hsiung Hsu, Research Center for Environmental Changes – Academia Sinica, TW

49. Daniela Jacob, Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Director, Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), DE

50. Alexandra Jahn, University of Colorado Boulder, US

51. Christian Jakob, Professor, Monash University, AU

52. Thomas Jung, Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, DE

53. Christopher Kadow, DKRZ, DE

54. In-Sik Kang, Indian Ocean Center/Second Institute of Oceanography, CN

55. Sarah Kang, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, KR/DE

56. Karthik Kashinath, NVIDIA, US

57. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, University of Hamburg/CLICCS, DE

58. Daniel Klocke, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE

59. Uta Kloenne, Climate Analytics, DE
60. Milan Klöwer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US

61. Chihiro Kodama, Japan Agency For Marine-Earth Science and Technology, JP

62. Stefan Kollet, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, DE

63. Tobias Kölling, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE

64. Jenni Kontkanen, CSC – IT Center for Science, FI

65. Steve Kopp, Esri Inc., US

66. Michal Koran, Global Arena Research Institute and Masaryk University, CZ

67. Markku Kulmala, Professor, University of Helsinki, FI

68. Hanna Lappalainen, University of Helsinki, FI

69. Fakhria Latifi, Technical University of Darmstadt, DE

70. Bryan Lawrence, Professor, NCAS/University of Reading, UK

71. June-Yi Lee, Professor, Pusan National University/IBS Center for Climate Physics, KR

72. Quentin Lejeune, Climate Analytics, DE

73. Christian Lessig, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, DE

74. Chao Li, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE

75. Thomas Lippert, Head of Jülich Supercomputing Centre, DE

76. Jürg Luterbacher, Director Science and Innovation/Chief Scientist, WMO, CH

77. Pekka Manninen, CSC – IT Center for Science, FI

78. Jochem Marotzke, Director, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE

79. Satoshi Matsuoka, Head, Riken Center for Computational Science, JP

80. Charlotte Merchant, Student, Princeton University, US

81. Peter Messmer, NVIDIA, US

82. Gero Michel, AIG Reinsurance, BS

83. Kristel Michielsen, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, DE

84. Tomoki Miyakawa, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute – The University of Tokyo, JP

85. Jensen Müller, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, DE

86. Ramsha Munir, Technical University of Darmstadt, DE

87. Sandeep Narayanasetti, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, IN

88. Ousmane Ndiaye, National Agency for Civil Aviation and Meteorology, SN

89. Carlos Nobre, Science Panel for the Amazon, BR

90. Achim Oberg, Professor, University of Hamburg, DE

91. Riko Oki, Director, Earth Observation Research Center, JAXA, Tsukuba, JP

92. Tuba Özkan-Haller, Professor and Dean, Oregon State University, US

93. Tim Palmer, Royal Society Research Professor of Climate Physics, University of Oxford, UK

94. Stan Posey, NVIDIA, US

95. Andreas Prein, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), US

96. Odessa Primus, Global Arena Research Institute, CZ

97. Mike Pritchard, NVIDIA/University of California – Irvine, US

98. Julie Pullen, Propeller Ventures, US

99. Dian Putrasahan, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE

100. Johannes Quaas, Professor, Leipzig University, DE

101. Krishnan Raghavan, Director Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology – Pune, IN

102. Venkatachalam Ramaswamy, Director, NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory – Princeton University, US

103. Markus Rapp, Director, DLR Institute of Atmospheric Physics, DE

104. Florian Rauser, Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz, DE

105. Markus Reichstein, Director, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, DE

106. Aromar Revi, Director, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, IN

107. Sonakshi Saluja, Reiner Lemoine Institute/Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, CH
108. Masaki Satoh, Professor, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, JP

109. Vera Schemann, University of Cologne, DE

110. Sebastian Schemm, ETH Zurich, CH

111. Christina Schnadt Poberaj, Executive Director, Center for Climate Systems Modeling C2SM, ETH Zurich, CH

112. Thomas Schulthess, Professor ETH Zurich, and director, CSCS, CH

113. Catherine Senior, Met Office, UK

114. Jagadish Shukla, Professor, George Mason University, US

115. Manmeet Singh, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology – Pune, IN

116. Julia Slingo, (Chief Scientist of Met Office, retired), UK

117. Adam Sobel, Professor, Columbia University, US

118. Silvina Alicia Solman, University of Buenos Aires/CONICET, AR

119. Jenna Spitzer, PhD candidate, Utrecht University, NE

120. Philip Stier, Professor, University of Oxford, UK

121. Thomas Stocker, Professor, University of Bern (former IPCC WG1 co-chair), CH

122. Sarah Strock, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, US

123. Hang Su, Institute of Atmospheric Physics – Chinese Academy of Science, CN

124. Petteri Taalas, Secretary General, WMO, CH

125. John Taylor, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, AU

126. Susann Tegtmeier, Professor, University of Saskatchewan, CA

127. Georg Teutsch, Professor, UFZ – Leipzig, DE

128. Adrian Tompkins, International Centre for Theoretical Physics – Trieste, IT

129. Uwe Ulbrich, Professor, Institute of Meteorology – Freie Universität Berlin, DE

130. Pier Luigi Vidale, Professor, NCAS/University of Reading, UK

131. Chien-Ming Wu, Professor, National Taiwan University, TW

132. Hao Xu, Tencent SSV/Tencent Carbon Neutrality Lab, CN

133. Najibullah Zaki, Technical University of Darmstadt, DE

134. Laure Zanna, Professor, New York University, US

135. Tianjun Zhou, Professor, Institute of Atmospheric Physics – Chinese Academy of Sciences, CN

136. Florian Ziemen, DKRZ, DE

**Author contributions.** All authors: conceptualization, writing – review and editing. Bjorn Stevens: supervision, writing – original draft preparation, methodology.

**Competing interests.** The contact author has declared that none of the authors has any competing interests.

**Disclaimer.** Publisher’s note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors.

**Financial support.** Support from the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (grant no. 01LK2202B), EC Horizon 2020 (NextGEMS, grant no. 101003470), and the JSPS Core-to-Core Program (grant no. JPJSCCA20220001) was provided.

The article processing charges for this open-access publication were covered by the Max Planck Society.

**Review statement.** This paper was edited by David Carlson and reviewed by two anonymous referees.