Rosa’s JourneyThroughDestination Earth

Challenge

How do you make advanced concepts, such as digital twins of the Earth, Earth System models, and AI integration, relatable to everyday people?

This was the main challenge faced by ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) when communicating its role in Destination Earth (DestinE) – an EU project aimed at building digital replicas of Earth. Concepts related to DestinE — AI, digital twins, and the digital twin engine — are technically dense and distant from the average citizen’s daily reality. D&D was tasked with translating these abstract scientific elements into relatable, emotionally engaging content for a general audience.

Idea, solution

D&D proposed an innovative concept: a series of animation videos that follow a science documentary filmmaker named Rosa, and a storytelling format designed to mirror the audience’s learning journey.
Rather than developing isolated explainer animations, D&D proposed a narrative-driven miniseries – a trilogy of animated short episodes following Rosa, a curious and engaged science documentary filmmaker. Rosa explores DestinE and asks the questions the audience might ask and learns as they do.

1. Artificial Intelligence in DestinE – exploring how AI supports the quantification of uncertainty in high-resolution simulations;
2. Climate Change Digital Twin – demonstrating the real-world societal impacts of better climate data;
3. The Digital Twin Engine – unpacking the concept and key roles of the “Engine” that brings together all the different parts of DestinE.

The animation’s creative approach simultaneously allows the possibility to show “real-life” elements in Rosa’s journey (visiting locations, making interviews, etc) but also provides the opportunity to be in a more abstract realm where different concepts (like future climate projections) can be clarified. Every episode begins with a relatable real-world problem, which Rosa explores through interviews with ECMWF experts, bridging the gap between scientific ambition and social relevance.

Result

An engaging trilogy that resonated with the audience. Following the release of Episode 1, the value of the narrative format and Rosa as a character became clear.

The videos have been shared across ECMWF’s platforms, including its Destination Earth website – episode 1, episode 2, episode 3 – YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media channels.

The storyline created a compelling reason to watch all three episodes, with cliffhangers subtly encouraging return views. By blending science with storytelling, D&D helped ECMWF bring Destination Earth closer to reality.