Climate variability and change in the past, present, and future: complementary insights from models, satellites, and ground stations

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Location
B2, L5, R5220 (Seaside)

Abstract

Extreme climate events affect the lives of millions people around the world each year and are anticipated to increase in frequency and magnitude due to climate change. Improving our understanding of historical and expected climate variability and change is paramount to mitigating the impacts of these extreme events. In this seminar, I will talk about my research on the fusion of information from weather models, satellites, and ground stations to gain a better understanding of climate variability in the past, present, and future. The presentation will be divided into three parts. The first part focuses on reconstructing the past climate and introduces the groundbreaking Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) dataset. The second part focuses on monitoring and forecasting climate extremes and presents the most comprehensive near real-time soil moisture product evaluation to date. The third and final part focuses on climate change impacts and highlights a unique high-resolution assessment of projected future changes in the Köppen-Geiger climate classification.

Brief Biography

Dr Hylke Beck is a senior scientist at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in Italy. Before joining the JRC, Dr. Beck worked as a postdoc at Princeton University and completed his PhD at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. His research interests include precipitation estimation, climate change impact assessment, flood and drought forecasting, satellite remote sensing, machine learning, and big data analysis. He is recipient of the Web of Science Highly Cited Researchers award and has over 60 peer-reviewed papers in prestigious journals including Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and Nature Climate Change. He is actively engaging with other scientists and the public on Twitter and his website hosting his climate data products has over 100 unique visitors daily. He is a fierce proponent of open-access, diversity, and equality in science.