NVIDIA introduced the Earth-2 platform, designed to help organizations around the world more effectively address the impacts of climate change. Earth-2 serves as a digital replica of the Earth, capable of simulating weather patterns with incredible detail at a resolution of just two kilometers.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang unveiled Earth-2 at the NVIDIA GTC 2024 event in San Jose, California. The concept of Earth-2 was initially introduced in 2021, and the platform is now ready for implementation.
Earth-2 aims to enhance understanding of climatic processes and expedite preparations for natural disasters. For instance, Taiwan, a nation frequently affected by typhoons, plans to utilize Earth-2 to enhance flood risk analysis and improve evacuation preparedness.
“Taiwan is a critical link in the global supply chain, and flood analysis and evacuation readiness are at the core of our mission,” stated Chia-Ping Cheng, the director of Taiwan’s weather service CWA. “With over 136 typhoons hitting the island since 2000, leveraging Earth-2 to mitigate their impact is crucial for enhancing disaster response and resolution.”
A key advantage of Earth-2 is its rapid data processing capabilities. Utilizing NVIDIA DGX cloud supercomputers enables the platform to deliver forecasts and warnings about imminent threats in seconds, a significant improvement over traditional methods that may take minutes or even hours.
The company asserts that Earth-2 is 1000 times faster at generating predictive images than existing models and boasts a 3000 times greater energy efficiency due to the AI generative model, Corrdiff.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang remarked, “The Cloud Earth-2 API interfaces are designed to enhance our preparedness for extreme weather conditions and inspire proactive measures in moderately extreme scenarios.”