Blue-Green Cities: ‘Uncertainty Workshop 1’, London, 18 July 2013
To investigate the flows of data and information through the model cascade and highlight specific links between work packages, e.g. sharing of data, passing data from one WP to another, using information from research in one WP to inform decisions in another WP. Also discussing uncertainty jargon.
‘Uncertainty Quantification, Risk and Decision’, London, 22-23 May 2012
This workshop brought together experts from various disciplines covering different aspects of uncertainty quantification. It focused mainly on the following three topics: the characterisation of uncertainty, the design of experiments and decision-making under uncertainty.
Confidence from Uncertainty: Interpreting Climate Predictions
The exhibit was run as part of the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, Royal Society, 5-10 July 2011.
The exhibit was also run as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, 4 November 2011 at LSE with an interactive exhibit as well as a public lecture given by Dr David Stainforth.
Introduction
Throughout history man has tried to predict the future. Nowadays scientists are looked to as a source of forecasts, and over recent decades computer models have become their greatest tool. But computer models are different from reality, and experiments with computer models are different from experiments on reality.
This exhibit explores how we make and communicate predictions, how and when we can deduce probabilities, and the role of computer models in these processes. We focus particularly on climate change where basic physics is enough to highlight the severity of the problem but forecasting the details is one of today’s grand scientific challenges. Progress requires integrating skills and understanding from disciplines as diverse as physics, mathematics, computer science, statistics, chemistry, ecology, economics, philosophy and more.
How does it work?
Mankind’s emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are warming the planet. This in turn will change the local climate we experience all around the globe. In the globalised society we live in we will feel the consequences not only as a result of local changes but also as a result of impacts in distant places.
Thus we can confidently know that climate change poses a significant threat to our society; to the way we live. But what about the details? What does this actually mean for you or me, here? Providing such details is a forecasting problem unlike any other. In most forecasting situations we have a way of testing the reliability of our forecasts; we make a forecast, or a collection of forecasts, and see if they were right. If they weren’t we would go away and change our forecasting system. But for climate change there is no way of making such statistical checks. So scientists rely on understanding, some of which is encapsulated in extremely complicated computer models. Working out how we use the output of such models and how we evaluate, communicate and respond to different types of uncertainty is the subject of this exhibit.
Publicity
An interview with David Stainforth, Royal Society Summer Science 2011
A Chance to Meet Real Live Scientists Dr David Stainforth quoted in an article about the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, Guardian, 6 July 2011
Flyer for Interactive Exhibit and Public Lecture, 4 November 2011
Posters
Climate Change: Two Key Questions
Sources of Knowledge
Flavours of Uncertainty
The Climate Change-Style Gamble
‘Operational Approaches to Weather Risk: from hours to decades’, London, 22 June 2004
Mitigation of weather risk through direct action is an operational reality, even if hedging and insurance options have been put in place. This meeting will survey the application of current and future sources of weather information towards the active management of weather risk in practice. The aim is to provide a realistic evaluation of what is possible with current forecast information, and what is likely to be available in the near future. This includes combining observations, multiple forecasts, and historical information in the context of specific user applications. The value of weather forecast information depends on the particular user application. We will use case studies as spring boards for discussing problems of interest to the participants.
Selby Public Lectures
In 2002 Dr Leonard Smith was awarded the Selby Fellowship and invited to tour Australia to present a series of public lectures and seminars. What follows was taken from the Australian Academy of Science website.
The Selby Fellowship is financed through the generosity of the Selby Scientific Foundation. Fellowships are awarded to distinguished overseas scientists to visit Australia for public lecture/seminar tours and to visit scientific centres in Australia.
Dr Leonard Smith hails from Florida, USA. He has degrees from the University of Florida and Columbia University, and read for his PhD in Physics at the latter under the supervision of Professor E.A. Spiegel. His thesis was entitled Lacunarity and Chaos in Nature.
Dr Smith has held research positions at the University of Cambridge, UK; the University of Warwick, UK; the University of Potsdam, Germany; and the Paris Meteorological Dynamics Laboratory, France.
Dr Smith is currently the Northville Senior Research Fellow in Mathematics at Pembroke College, Oxford, and he is also a Research Associate in the Mathematics Institute at the University of Oxford. He also has a part-time secondment as a Reader (Associate Professor) at the London School of Economics, where he is Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Time Series.
Dr Smith is well qualified to deliver public lectures as the Selby Fellow 2002. He has given many invited talks, such as
- 1998 Winter School on Mathematical and Physical Tools for Climate Dynamics, Paris, France;
- 1996 Summer School on Non-linearity: Chaotic, Non-chaotic and Random Dynamics, Varenna, Italy;
- 1996 British Ecological Workshop on Non-linear dynamics in short ecological time series, Leicester, England;
- 1996 XXI European Geophysical Society General Assembly on Fleeting Shadows: Optimal Ensembles and Model Realism, The Hague, The Netherlands;
- 1996 European Meeting on Medium Range Weather Forecasting on Accountability and Error in Ensemble Prediction of Baroclinic Flows, Reading, England;
- and many others.
Dr Smith’s research interests include
- the dynamics of physical systems, and approximations of them;
- numerical approximation methods and their dynamics;
- non-linear time series and prediction techniques;
- ultimate limits to predictability; and
- applications in industrial, economic and natural systems, particularly climate records and electricity demand forecasting.
Dr Smith has published extensively in the physics, mathematics and climatological literature, and is currently writing a book entitled A Very Short Introduction to Chaos. He is the Secretary of the European Geophysical Society’s Section on Non-linear Processes, and has served on a variety of editorial boards of journals and conference program committees.
