Hylke E. Beck

CLI Faculty

Assistant Professor, Climate Analytics

Biography

 As a fierce proponent of open access, diversity, and equality in science, he is the recipient of Web of Science’s Highly Cited Researchers Award, and has written over 60 peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals, including Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and Nature Climate Change. He has also produced multiple innovative hydrometeorological data products, including the groundbreaking Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) product. With a three hourly 0.1° resolution available from the year 1979 to approximately three hours from real-time, MSWEP merges gauge, satellite and (re)analysis data to obtain the highest quality precipitation estimates at any location in the world. His research at KAUST aims to quantify and understand the impacts of climate change in the Kingdom and to improve the country’s natural hazard monitoring and early warning capacity.

Research Interests

Dr. Beck’s research interests include hydrological modeling, operational hydrometeorology, climate change impact assessment, flood and drought forecasting, satellite remote sensing, machine learning and big data analysis.

Selected Publications

Beck, H. E., McVicar, T. R., Zambrano-Bigiarini, M., Alvarez-Garret, C., Baez-Villanueva, O. M., Sheffield, J., Karger, D., and Wood, E. F. (2020). Bias correction of global
precipitation climatologies using discharge observations from 9372 catchments. Journal of Climate, 33:1299–1315.
Beck, H. E., Pan, M., Lin, P., Seibert, J., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., and Wood, E. F. (2020). Global fully distributed parameter regionalization based on observed streamflow from
4229 headwater catchments. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125.
Beck, H. E., Pan, M., Miralles, D. G., Reichle, R. H., Dorigo, W. A., Hahn, S., Sheffield, J., Karthikeyan, L., Balsamo, G., Parinussa, R. M., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Du, J., Kimball,
J. S., Vergopolan, N., and Wood, E. F. (2021). Evaluation of 18 satellite- and model-based soil moisture products using in situ measurements from 826 sensors. Hydrology
and Earth System Sciences, 25(1):17–40.
Beck, H. E., Pan, M., Roy, T., Weedon, G. P., Pappenberger, F., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Huffman, G. J., Adler, R. F., and Wood, E. F. (2019). Daily evaluation of 26 precipitation
datasets using Stage-IV gauge-radar data for the CONUS. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 23:207–224.
Beck, H. E., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., and de Roo, A. (2015). Global maps of streamflow characteristics based on observations from several thousand catchments. Journal of
Hydrometeorology, 16(4):1478–1501.
Beck, H. E., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Larraondo, P. R., McVicar, T. R., Pan, M., Dutra, E., and Miralles, D. G. (2022). MSWX: global 3-hourly 0.1◦ bias-corrected meteorological
data including near-real-time updates and forecast ensembles. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 103(3):E710–E732.
Beck, H. E., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Levizzani, V., Schellekens, J., Miralles, D. G., Martens, B., and de Roo, A. (2017). MSWEP: 3-hourly 0.25◦ global gridded precipitation
(1979–2015) by merging gauge, satellite, and reanalysis data. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21(1):589–615.
Beck, H. E., Vergopolan, N., Pan, M., Levizzani, V., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., Weedon, G. P., Brocca, L., Pappenberger, F., Huffman, G. J., and Wood, E. F. (2017). Global-scale
evaluation of 22 precipitation datasets using gauge observations and hydrological modeling. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21(12):6201–6217.
Beck, H. E., Westra, S., Tan, J., Pappenberger, F., Huffman, G. J., McVicar, T. R., Gr ̈undemann, G. J., Vergopolan, N., Fowler, H. J., Lewis, E., Verbist, K., and Wood, E. F.
(2020). PPDIST, global 0.1◦ daily and 3-hourly precipitation probability distribution climatologies for 1979–2018. Scientific Data, 7.
Beck, H. E., Wood, E. F., Pan, M., Fisher, C. K., Miralles, D. G., van Dijk, A. I. J. M., McVicar, T. R., and Adler, R. F. (2019). MSWEP V2 global 3-hourly 0.1◦ precipitation:
methodology and quantitative assessment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(3):473–500.
Beck, H. E., Zimmermann, N. E., McVicar, T. R., Vergopolan, N., Berg, A., and Wood, E. F. (2018). Present and future Koppen-Geiger climate classification maps at 1-km
resolution. Scientific Data, 5(180214)

Education

He obtained his B.Sc. ('06), M.Sc. ('08), and Ph.D. ('13) degrees in Hydrology from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University, U.S., from 2016 to 2020.

Awards

Clarivate Highly Cited Research Awards, 2021 and 2022

KAUST Affiliations

Climate and Livability Initiative