Exploring the Deep Earth: Supercomputing and Digital Twins

Understanding the history of our planet necessitates a look into Earth’s deep interior. The Earth’s mantle is in permanent motion and drives the continental plates leading to earthquakes, and volcanic activities world wide. Seismology can provide a 3D image or snapshot of the current state of the dynamic Earth’s interior allowing us to understand the underlying physical phenomena.

Like in medical tomography this “imaging” process is computationally very time consuming. Simulating seismic wavefields in the Earth requires access to the largest supercomputers and appropriate programming models. Today natural sciences aim at developing (multi-physics) digital twins that mimic the behaviour of nature’s complex system.

We will show the impact of supercomputing on the understanding of our planet’s interior, the forecasting of ground motions for earthquake scenarios, and also how the seismic wavefield can be used to monitor climate change.