Roman Frigg will be giving a keynote talk on ‘Clouds over Climate Modelling’ at the Bristol Graduate Conference on Philosophy and Climate Change| at the University of Bristol, on 9 June 2012.

Reason Machete, a Visiting Fellow to CATS, will be giving a talk entitled 'Inflation forecasting: Approaching the calibration mirage|' at the Bank of England on 1 June 2012.

Roman Frigg will be giving a talk entitled ‘Die Kurzsichtigkeit Chaotischer Modelle’ (The Miopia of chaotic models') at the University of Bern in Switzerland on 30 May 2012.

Leonard Smith is giving an invited talk entitled ‘Extreme Modelling, Extreme theories, Extreme Statistics and the understanding of Rare, Unusual, or Extreme Events’ at the Aggregation, Inference and Rare Events in the Natural and Socio-economic Sciences event at the University of Warwick, 17 - 18 May 2012.

Ana Lopez will be giving a keynote talk on ‘Developing adaptation strategies under uncertainty: An example from the water sector’ in the Climate Change – Planning for Adaptation session at the IWA World Congress on Water, Climate and Energy| on 14-17 May 2012.

Ana Lopez gave a talk on ‘Using climate models to inform adaptation of climate change’, and held a debate with Professor Suraje Dessai in the annual Earth System Spring School, in Southampton|, on 29 March 2012.

Professor Michael Ghil presented a lecture at CATS entitled 'Coupled dynamic modelling of the economy and of the climate system|' as part of the Munich Re programme on Evaluating the economics of climate risks and opportunities in the insurance sector| on 15 March 2012.

Leonard Smith gave a talk entitled 'Probability Forecasting: Looking Under the Hood and at the Road Ahead|' at the Oxford University Mathematical Geoscience seminar, 9 March 2012.

Swenja Surminski presented a technical report on methods and tools for loss and damage assessment at the UNFCC expert meeting on Loss and Damage| in Tokyo on 26-27 March 2012.

Emma Suckling gave a talk at the University of Reading entitled 'Do quantitative decadal forecasts from GCMs provide decision relevant skill?|' on 15 March 2012.

Swenja Surminski participated in a panel discussion at the Colloquium on disaster risk transfer and adaptation| at the French Senate in Paris on 8 March 2012. She outlined insurance and adaptation examples from developing countries and the developed world.

In February, CATS Visiting Fellow Jerome Ellepola gave a talk entitled 'The Process Synthesis Tool: Optimum decision steering in a complex process space-GTL|’.

2011

Leonard Smith gave a talk entitled 'Real-World Challenges to Data Assimilation and Uncertainty Quantification in Big Nonlinear Models|' at the Special Statistics Colloquium, University of Chicago, Chicago, 22 November 2011.

Roman Frigg gave a talk entitled 'Climate forecasting with chaos or chaos in climate forecasting?' at the EPSA 2011 Conference|, Athens, 5-8 October 2011.

Leonard Smith gave a talk entitled 'Scientific Support for Climate Policy: Is a VVUQ analysis of today's models helpful? And where not: what then?|' at the ICIS workshop 'Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification Across Disciplines|', Park City, Utah, 6-13 August 2011.

Oliver Walker presented a talk entitled 'Reasoning about Unawareness: A Decision Theoretic Account' at a conference 'Decision, Games and Logic|', Maastricht, 7-8 July 2011.

Professor Leonard Smith gave an invited talk at the climate science symposium organised by the Société de Philosophie des Sciences|. The symposium is affiliated to the 14th Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science| and will be held in Nancy, France, July 19-26 2011.

Emma Suckling gave a talk entitled 'Gradient descent assimilation for the point-vortex model' at the Monsoon School on Mathematical and Statistical Foundations of Data Assimilation|, DARP, Bangalore, India, 14th July 2011.

Hailiang Du gave a talk entitled 'Nowcasting via Gradient Descent: Moving from Theory towards Reality|' at the Predictability + Data Assimilation conference|, Nordita (Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics), Stockholm, 27th May 2011.

Leonard Smith gave an invited talk 'What (and who) do ensembles of climate models inform' at the Current Challenges in Climate Modelling in 2011| conference, University of Uppsala, Sweden, 26th May 2011.

"Seeking and Extracting Relevant Information: Linking Natural Science, Social Science and Policy" presented by David Stainforth at the 2011 Colorado Conference on Earth System Governance: Crossing Boundaries and Building Bridges|, Colorado State University, USA, 17th-20th May 2011

"Insight or numerical Engineering? The Role of Simulation Modeling in Quantitative Decision Support" presented by Leonard Smith at the Midas Conference on Epistemology of Modeling & Simulation: Building Bridges Between the Philosophical and Modeling Communities|, University of Pittsburgh, 3rd April 2011.

Trevor Maynard gave a seminar entitled "Modelling insurance markets: value of seasonal weather forecasts|" at Cass Business School, London on 23rd March 2011.

A number of CATS people gave presentations at the All Models Are Wrong| workshop in Groningen, Netherlands 14-16 March:
Leonard Smith "All models are wrong but some are dangerous: Philosophical aspects of statistical model selection" (talk)
Emma Suckling and Leonard Smith "All models are wrong: Which are worth paying to look at? A case study of global mean temperature| " (poster)
Roman Binter and Leonard Smith "All models are wrong, some can be made less wrong|" (poster)
Hailiang Du and Leonard Smith "What is the point of Data Assimilation when the Model(s) is Wrong?|" (poster)
Link to abstracts|.

"The Implications of Climate Model Uncertainty for Insurance and Adaptation Decision Making", given by Swenja Surminski at the Law and Economics of Natural Hazards Management in a Changing Climate seminar|, Innsbruck, 24th-25th February 2011.

Leonard Smith gave an invited talk at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College, London on 23rd February 2011 entitled "Contrasting Weather Prediction, Climate Projection and Scientific Insight: Can technical aspects of Data Assimilation tell us about the Decision Relavance of Models?|"

Henry Wynn gave a seminar entitled "Use Algebraic methods to study complex experimental designs"| at European Centre for Living Technology |in Venice on 14th February 2011.

"Climate Forecasting with Chaos, or Chaos in Climate Forecasting|", a public lecture given by Roman Frigg, Philosophy @ LSE, London 14th February 2011.

Swenja Surminski gave a talk entitled "Adaptation to climate extremes: Investigating the role of the private sector - the case of the insurance industry" at Economics of Natural Disasters - Bridging Disaster Risk Reduction & Climate Adaptation Efforts and Strategies| workshop, Venice 10 - 11 February 2011.

"Cat Risk Management: An Academic perspective - current research efforts within the industry and academia" presented by Swenja Surminski at Cat Risk Management: Modelling , measuring, managing and minimising cat risk, London 3 - 4 February 2011.

A number of CATS people gave presentations and talks at the Equipping society for climate change through improved treatments of uncertainty conference| held in Leeds 19th January 2011.
Leonard Smith "Justifying Compexity and Expense to Decision Makers" (talk)
Hailiang Du "Robust Measure of Predictive Skill and Ensemble Design|" (poster presentation)
Ana Lopez "Are pattern scaling methods useful to inform about adaptation strategies?|"
and "Is probabilistic climate change information required to inform adaptation to climate change?|" (poster presentations)
Emma Suckling "(When) Are Simulation Models Better?|" (poster presentation)
Alex Jarman "Small-number statistics, Common Sense and Profit: Challenges and Non-challenges for Hurricane Forecasting|" (poster presentation)

2010

"Revisiting the Generation and Interpretation of Climate Information for Adaptation Decision Making|" presented by Nicola Ranger at the AGU Annual Conference, San Fransisco, 13th-17th December.

"Scientific Modelling in Support of Decision Making:Skill and Value, Nonlinearity and Credibility"| presented by Leonard Smith at CMU on Friday 22nd October.

"Toward decision-relevant probability distributions: Communicating ignorance, uncertainty and model-noise" presented by Leonard Smith at the International Underwriting Association's Catastrophe Modelling 2010 Seminar| on Tuesday 12th October.

Hailiang Du gave a talk entitled 'Nowcasting with Indistinguishable States'| at the University of Reading |on Wednesday 6th October.

A number of CATS people, including Leonard Smith, Dave Stainforth, Nicola Ranger, Falk Niehoerster, Ana Lopez, Milena Cuellar, Joe Daron and Alex Jarman, Attended to the 11th International Meeting on Statistical Climatology (IMSC)| in Edinburgh, 12-16 July.

Max Fehr and Pauline Barrieu organized two sessions for the Energy and Emissions Markets" stream of the Euro XXIV |(24th European Conference on Operational Research) in Lisbon, 11 - 14 July. Max also gave a talk "Option Pricing in the European Unions Emission Trading Scheme". Abstract|.

"Extracting Insight from Predictions of the Irrelevant: Can the Diversity in Our Models Inform Our Uncertainty of the Future?|" presented by Leonard Smith at 28th International Conference on Mathematical Geophysics Modelling Earth Dynamics: Complexity, Uncertainty and Validation|, Pisa, June 2010.

Arthur Petersen presented a workshop paper (joint with Leonard Smith) entitled "Reframing the Reliability of Models: Moving from Error to Quality for Use|" at the ESF workshop "Exploring Epistemic Shifts in Computer Based Environmental Sciences", June 10th - 12th 2010, Aarhus University, Denmark.

"Stochastic Modelling of Deteministic Systems|" seminar presentation by Thomas Stemler at LSE, 10 Jun 2010.

"Climate Prediction: Lessons from Simple Non-Linear Systems|" presented by David Stainforth at Birkeland Workshop| on Complex Natural Systems in Tromso, Norway, 27-31 May 2010. He will also be giving "Climate Change: Controversy, Communication and Debate|" at an evening outreach session.

"Improving the IPCC's uncertainty management in assessing climate change, impacts and responses|" presented by Arthur Petersen (Munich Re Visiting Professor) at LSE on 13th May 2010.

"The Bayesian's Burden: Non-linear Models, Probability and Insight", a plenary talk presented by Leonard Smith at Models & Simulations IV conference|, Toronto, 7-9 May 2010.

"Can we expect to predict the climate when we cannot shadow the weather?"| presented by Leonard Smith at EGU|, Vienna, 2-7 May 2010. Download Paper|.

"Examining Uncertainties In Climate Models: Forecasting The Impact Of Best And Worst Case Climate Scenarios On The Future Of The ILS Market" presented by Leonard Smith and Pauline Barrieu at ILS Europe|, Le Meridien Picadilly, London, 26-28 April 2010

"Modeling Emission Trading Schemes"| presented by Max Fehr at Industrial-Academic Forum on Commodities, Energy Markets, and Emissions Trading,
9-10 April 2010, Fields Institute, Toronto.

"The Bayesian's Burden: Or Why Physicists Shrug and Statisticians Scoff" presented by Leonard Smith at NCAS/NERC| Earth System Science Spring Summer School, York, 9 April 2010.

"Getting beyond the statistics: Towards Quantifying the Geometry of Model Error" presented by Leonard Smith at RMetS meeting on model error|, MO, Exeter, 8 April 2010.

Leonard Smith and Nicholas Stern 'Uncertainty, Ambiguity and Risk in Forming Climate Policy', presented at Handling uncertainty in science|, Royal Society, London, 22 March 2010. Abstract|

"Climate Models: Current Science and Common Sense|" presented by Leonard Smith, and chaired by Professor Nancy Cartwright, at the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy Lecture - part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, LSE, 16 March 2010.

"Using Empirically Inadequate Models to inform Your Subjective Probabilities: How might Solvency II inform climate change decisions?" presented by Leonard Smith at Oxford Maths Institute meeting on 'Climate: Methods for Model Comparison and Criticism in the context of data assimilation', Oxford, 12 March 2010

"Translating Seasonal Forecasts into Year Ahead Hurricane Numbers: The Outlook and Some Recent Advances in ENSEMBLES" presented by Leonard Smith at Environmental Risk Management workshop (NERC + Maths KTN), Lloyds, 24 February 2010

"Causation and explanation in our nonlinear world" presented by Leonard Smith (with comments by Roman Frigg) at Barcelona Conference on Causality and Explanation in Physics, Biology and Economics|, 18 February 2010

"Decision-Making with Climate Models" Presented by Leonard Smith, Roman Frigg, Seamus Bradley at LSE Choice Group seminar, LSE, 3 February 2010. Abstract|

'Challenges in the Extraction of Decision Relevant Information from Multi-Decadal Ensembles of GCMs' Presented by Dave Stainforth at SAMSI workshop on Climate Change, February 2010. Abstract|

"Examining Uncertainties In Climate Models: Forecasting The Impact Of Best And Worst Case Climate Scenarios On The Future Of The ILS Market" Presented by Leonard Smith at 7th Insurance Linked Securities Summit|, New York, 28-29 January 2010.

"Evaluating high dimensional models given only a few observations: Anomalies, re-analyses and reality". Presented by Leonard Smith at workshop Exploring Complex Dynamics in High-Dimensional Chaotic Systems: From Weather Forecasting to Oceanic Flows (ECODYC10|), at MPIPKS, Dresden, 25-29 January 2010.

'Difficulties in Deriving Forecast Probabilities From General Circulation Models and Efforts to Estimate Uncertainty in Future Climate projections' Presented by Dave Stainforth at "Nonstationarity, Hydrologic Frequency Analysis and Water Resource Management" workshop, 13-15 January 2010, Boulder Colorado and the EQUIP launch meeting. Abstract|

2009

'Quantitative Decision Support Requires Quantitative Use Guidance: Communicating deep-uncertainty and model-noise' Presented by Leonard Smith at AGU USA (Contributed talk), 15 December 2009

"The Search for Relevant Climate Change Information to Support Adaptation Decision Makers: Lessons from Reductionism, Emergence and the Past" Presented by David Stainforth at AGU USA (Contributed talk), 15 December 2009

"Uncertainty Estimation in Regional Climate Change: Extracting Robust Information from Perturbed Physics Ensembles" Presented by David Stainforth at AGU USA (Contributed talk), 15 December 2009

"Using Ensemble Prediction Systems to improve risk management in the Energy Markets" Presented by Leonard Smith at Weather Challenges for the Energy Market, Berlin, 9-10 December 2009

"Poster title 1: On Weighting Seasonal Models" Presented by Leonard Smith at Ensembles Final Symposium, Exeter, 16 November 2009

"Poster title 2: Evaluating Model Skill Relative to a Dynamic Climatology" Presented by Leonard Smith at Ensembles Final Symposium, Exeter, 16 November 2009

"Data Assimilation for Earth System Models: What's the Point?" Presented by Leonard Smith at WCRP-CLIVAR: Initialization of Earth System Models for Decadal Predictions|, at KNMI, Utrecht, 4-6 November 2009. Workshop final report |

"Toward Decision-Relevant Probability Distributions: Communicating Ignorance, Uncertainty, and Model-Noise" Presented by Leonard Smith at Defra/Met Office will hold an RS/RMetS meeting on the science of the UK Climate Projections, 15 October 2009

"One Two Three More: Challenges to Describing a Warmer World" Presented by Leonard Smith at 4 degrees and beyond, Oxford, 28-30 September 2009

"Experimental Design and Interpretation of Policy-relevant Climate Model Ensembles|" Presented by Leonard Smith at the SAMSI 2009-10 Program on Space-time Analysis for Environmental Mapping, Epidemiology and Climate Change, Opening workshop on Climate Change, 13-16 September 2009

"Climate Models and their Information Content for the Insurance Industry"| Presented by Leonard Smith (with David Stainforth, Ana Lopez and Edward Tredger) to the ABI Climate Change Data Seminar, 27 August 2009.

"Data Assimilation: What's the point?|" Presented by Leonard Smith (with David Stainforth, Ana Lopez and Edward Tredger) at American Statistical Association/JSM, Washintong DC, 03 August 2009

'When might a climate model prove fit for purpose? Expected Uncertainty -or- Big Surprise|' Presented by Leonard Smith at Max Plank Meeting, Dresden, 31 July 2009

"How does the diversity in our models inform us about the uncertainty in our future?"| Presented by Leonard Smith (with Ana Lopez, Dave Stainforth, Ed Tredger & Roman Binter) at Symposium I of the Munich Re programme of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy: Interpreting Models in a Climate Change Context, London 20 July 2009. Objectives and other talks of Symposium I |

Summer School Lectures, Budapest, 16 June 2009

'Seeing Through our Models: Coping with an inconvenient ignorance in a changing climate' Presented by Leonard Smith at Cutting Edge Lecture McGill University, 16 April 2009.

'Risk and Uncertainty: Understanding the Limits of Predictability' Presented by Leonard Smith at GEOSS Small Sea Change: Big Business Impacts Meeting Washington DC, 14 April 2009.