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Welcome
to issue 8 of CATS
e-news.
David Stainforth is leading the preparation
of an exhibit at this year's
Royal Society Summer
Exhibition. The
exhibit is entitled 'Confidence from
Uncertainty: Interpreting Climate Predictions'.
The exhibition is free to attend and will take place at the Royal Society,
5th-10th July.
More details to follow!
Other
announcements
Our congratulations to Pauline Barrieu on the birth of a baby boy, Arthur,
on the 28th February. Arthur is pictured right at just a few days old,
and 4 weeks later receiving his first introduction to the whiteboard!
Henry
Wynn has been awarded the Box Medal by the European Network for Business and
Industrial Economics (ENBIS). The medal is awarded annually in recognition
of 'an extraordinary statistician who has remarkably contributed his or her
work to the application of statistical methods in European business and
industry'. The medal will be presented at the ENBIS annual conference,
taking place in Portugal in September, at which Professor Wynn will deliver
an address. Further information about the Box Medal can be found
here.
CATS
postdocs Emma Suckling and Noha Youssef both had their vivas in early March
and both passed with minor corrections. Our congratulations to Drs Suckling
and Youssef!
Esther Heyhoe joined CATS at the beginning of February as part-time
administrative assistant, helping with website editing (including producing
the e-news!) and accounts processing amongst other things.
Conferences, workshops, presentations etc...February & March
Leonard Smith took part in
the Climate Science Day held at Capitol Hill, Washington DC on 16-17th
February. The visit was an opportunity to provide Members of Congress the
best possible access to scientific information on climate science when
making policy decisions.
During February and March
David Stainforth attended a number of events including:
-
Giving a seminar at
Reading University entitled "Challenges in the Interpretation of
Climate Ensembles: Why Good Statistical Methods Aren't Enough"
-
Giving a seminar at the Southampton branch of
National Oceanography Centre.
Link to
abstract.
-
Attending a British Council organised 'high level Franco-British policy
discussion on scientific uncertainty in Paris
Swenja Surminski gave a
number of talks during February and March including:
Swenja
Surminski also attended the workshop "Extreme
weather events: risk management and modelling implications" held at
Imperial College Business School, 31st March.
Roman Frigg gave a public
lecture, "Climate
Forecasting with Chaos, or Chaos in Climate Forecasting" as part of the
Philosophy @ LSE series on 14th February. A podcast of the event can be
downloaded
here.
Henry Wynn gave an invited
talk "Use
algebraic methods to study complex experimental designs" at the European
Centre for Living Technology, Venice on 14th February.
Leonard Smith gave an
invited talk "Contrasting Weather Prediction, Climate Projection and
Scientific Insight: Can technical aspects of Data Assimilation tell us about
the Decision Relevance of Models?" at the Grantham Institute, Imperial
College London on 23rd February.
"The role of climate change
in urban flood risk management today" was presented by Nicola Ranger at the
World Bank Experts Roundtable on Urban Flood Risk Management hosted by the
East Asia Disaster Risk Management team in March.
A number of CATS people gave
presentations at the 'All
Models are Wrong' workshop in Groningen, 14-16 March. Leonard Smith gave
a talk entitled "All models are wrong but some are dangerous: Philosophical
aspects of statistical model selection". Other presentations included Emma
Suckling and Leonard Smith's poster "Big models are wrong, little models are
wrong: Which models are worth paying to look at? A case study of global mean
temperature"; a joint poster presentation by Leonard Smith, Roman Frigg,
David Stainforth, Reason Machete, Seamus Bradley, Emma Suckling, Hailiang Du
and Falk Niehoerster entitled "Probably Wrong: Why model-based Probability
Distributions do not yield decision relevant probabilities (if the model is
wrong)"; Roman Binter and Leonard Smith's poster "Selecting versus combining
imperfect models: Why a PC approach beats Psi-Phi"; Hailiang Du and Leonard
Smith's poster "What is the Point of Data Assimilation when the Model(s) is
Wrong?"; Keith Beven's presentation entitled "Testing hydrological models as
hypotheses: a limits of acceptability approach and the issue of
disinformation".
Falk Niehoerster gave an
invited talk entitled "Towards decision relevant hurricane risk scenarios"
at the Risk Prevention Initiative (RPI) of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean
Science (BIOS). The talk focused on Falk's continuing research on hurricanes
with Nicola Ranger as part of the Munich Re programme.
Trevor Maynard gave a
seminar, "Modelling
insurance markets: value of seasonal weather forecasts" at the Cass
Business School, London on 23rd March.
Emma Suckling participated
in a 'Science Speed Dating' event on 24th March which took place at Harris
City Academy in Crystal Palace. A-level science students from the school
were invited to sign up for a number of 'dates' with scientists from
different backgrounds and in different careers to learn about some of the
opportunities open to them. Emma commented that it was a fun way to
highlight the vast range of career options.
Alex Jarman presented his
recent work on small-number statistics and hurricane forecasting at the
Grantham's PhD seminar series on 30th March.
Upcoming Conferences
& other news
Leonard Smith will be giving a talk entitled "Insight or Numerical
Engineering? The Role of Simulation Modeling in Quantitative Decision
Support" at the
Epistemology of Modeling and Simulation Conference, University of
Pittsburgh, on 3rd April 2011.
Visiting Professor Arthur
Petersen will be visiting CATS/GRI from 16th May to 10th June.
David Stainforth will be
presenting a talk at the
2011 Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance, 17th - 20th May.
The talk is entitled "Seeking and Extracting Relevant Information: Linking
Natural Science, Social Science and Policy".
Leonard Smith, Arthur
Petersen and Hailiang Du will be attending the
Nordita
School/Conference on Predictability and Data Assimilation in May.
Jerome Ellepola along with
Jan van Schijndel, Nort Thijssen, Govert Baak, Abhijeet Avhale and Johan
Grievink will be presenting a paper "Development of a synthesis tool for
Gas-to-Liquid complexes" at the ESCAPE 21
Symposium due to be held in Halkidiki, Greece from 29th May - 1st June.
David Stainforth will be a
featured speaker at the 31st
International Symposium on Forecasting, Prague 26th - 29th June where he
will be giving two talks.
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Papers & other
outputs
Papers recently
finished:
Ranger, N. and Garbett-Shiels,
S.L. (2011) "How
can decision-makers in developing countries incorporate uncertainty about
future climate risks into existing planning and policy making processes?"
CCCEP/Grantham Policy Paper in collaboration with the World Resources Report
Reeder, T. and Ranger, N.
(2011) "How
do you adapt in an uncertain world? Lessons from the Thames Estuary 2100
project". World Resources Report, Washington D.C
Westerberg, I., Guerrero,
J.-L., Seibert, J., Beven, K. J., and Halldin, S., 2011, "Stage-discharge
uncertainty derived with a non-stationary rating curve in the Choluteca
River, Honduras" Hydrological Processes, 25, 603-613, DOI:
10.1002/hyp.7848.
Alfieri L., Smith P.J.,
Thielen-del Pozo J., and Beven K.J., 2011, "A staggered approach to flash
flood forecasting –
case study in the Cevennes Region", Advances in Geosciences, 29,
13-20
Beven, K J and Brazier, R E,
2011, "Dealing with Uncertainty in Erosion Models", in RPC Morgan and MA
Nearing (Eds) 'Handbook of Erosion Modelling', Wiley-Blackwell: Chichester,
52-79.
Buytaert, W and Beven, K J,
2011, "Models as multiple working hypotheses: Hydrological simulation of
tropical alpine wetlands", Hydrological Processes, in press
Beven K J, 2011, "Distributed
Models and Uncertainty in Flood Risk Management", in G. Pender and H.
Faulkner (Eds.), 'Flood Risk Science and Management', Wiley-Blackwell:
Chichester, 291-312.
Beven, K J, Leedal, D T and
Alcock, R, 2010, Uncertainty and good practice in hydrological prediction,
Vatten, 66:159 –163
Other
outputs:
Jim Baker
had a
letter concerning climate change published in The New Yorker magazine on
7th March.
Papers
submitted and/or in revision:
Leonard
Smith and Nicholas Stern "Uncertainty in Science and its Role in Climate
Policy" submitted to Royal Society Phil Trans A
Smith, LA,
Tredger, E., Stainforth, D.A. & Lopez, A. "On the Relevance of Model
Averages for Science Based Policy" submitted to GRL
Baker, D.
James & Richards, Gary "On the delivery of weather services and parallels
for the development of operational forest carbon monitoring, reporting, and
verification systems" submitted to Carbon Management. If you would
like a draft copy of the paper, please contact Lyn Grove (l.grove@lse.ac.uk)
Young, RMB,
Binter, R & Niehoerster, F "Limits of i-shadowing in a perfect model
rotating annulus" submitted to Physica D
Barrieu, PM
& Fehr, MW “Integrated EUA and CER price modeling and application for spread
option pricing” submitted to Operations Research
Barrieu, PM
& Tobelem,S “A new methodology for asset allocation under model risk”
submitted to Quantitative Finance
Barrieu, PM
& Sinclair Desgagne, B. “Economic Policy when Models Disagree” submitted to
Econometrica
Maruri-Aguilar, H.,
Senz-de-Cabezn, E. and Wynn, H. P. "the
Betti numbers of polynomial
hierarchical models for experimental designs"
submitted to Annals of Mathematics and Artificial
Intelligence
Bates, R.A., Maruri-Aguilar,
H and Wynn, H.P. "Smooth
supersaturated models" submitted to
Journal of Statistical
Planning and Inference
Smith, LA.
& Du, H.L. "Parameter estimation using Ignorance" in revision for
Physics
Review Letters
Du, HL &
Smith, LA "Improvement in Full Probability Forecasting at Seasonal
Lead-times" in revision for QJRMS
Khare, S &
Smith, LA "Data assimilation: A fully nonlinear approach to ensemble
formation using Indistinguishable States" in revision for Monthly Weather
Review
Maruri-Aguilar, H and
Wynn, H. P. "D-Optimality of
Sobol Sequences for Haar Wavelet
Models" under revision for Journal
of Statistical Theory and Practice
Giovagnoli, A and
Wynn, H. P. "(U,V)-ordering
and a duality theorem for risk aversion
and Lorentz-type ordering. Under
revision for Statistical Papers
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