Smith, Leonard A

Professor Leonard A Smith

Department	Position held
Department of Statistics	Research Professor
Centre for the Analysis of Time Series (CATS)	Director

Experience keywords:

statistical analysis of large computer models; weather; predictability; construction of non-linear models of physical systems; climate; analysis of significance in statistical estimates

Research summary > [Click to expand]

For the last three years, Professor Smith has been developing, within CATS, a coherent framework for using imperfect models to better understand and predict real dynamical systems. This has involved working with operational weather models of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, the UK Met Office, the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction and the US Naval Research Laboratory's NOGAPS system. He is also involved in developing methods of experimental design for climate-like applications based within the framework of Indistinguishable States. He is currently working on the experimental design for the EU ENSEMBLES project and the analysis of data from the DEMETER project.

Media experience:

Radio; TV

Contact Points
LSE phone number: +44 (0)20 7955 7626	LSE email: l.smith@lse.ac.uk

Publications

The following references are sourced from LSE Research Online|. References that are linked lead to the full text.

2013

Frigg, Roman and Bradley, Seamus and Machete, Reason L. and Smith, Leonard A. (2013) Probabilistic forecasting: why model imperfection is a poison pill. In: Andersen, Hanne and Dieks, Dennis and Gonzalez, Wenceslao and Ubel, Thomas and Wheeler, Gregory, (eds.) New challenges to philosophy of science. Springer. ISBN 9789400758445

Glendinning, Paul and Smith, Leonard A. (2013) Lacunarity and period-doubling. Dynamical systems, pp. 1-11. ISSN 1468-9367

Frigg, Roman and Bradley, Seamus and Du, Hailiang and Smith, Leonard A. (2013) Laplace's demon and climate change. Grantham Research Institue on Climate Change and the Environment working paper, 103. Grantham Research Institue on Climate Change and the Environment, London, UK

Frigg, Roman and Stainforth, David A. and Smith, Leonard A. (2013) The myopia of imperfect climate models: the case of UKCP09'. Philosophy of science, ISSN 0031-8248

2012

Du, Hailiang and Smith, Leonard A. (2012) Parameter estimation through ignorance. Physical review E, 86 (1). ISSN 1539-3755

Beven, Keith and Buytaert, Wouter and Smith, Leonard A. (2012) On virtual observatories and modelled realities (or why discharge must be treated as a virtual variable). Hydrological processes, 26 (12). pp. 1905-1908. ISSN 0885-6087

Stainforth, David A. and Smith, Leonard A. (2012) Policy: clarify the limits of climate models. Nature, 489 (7415). pp. 208-208. ISSN 0028-0836

Rowlands, Daniel J. and Frame, David J. and Ackerley, Duncan and Aina, Tolu and Booth, Ben B. B. and Christensen, Carl and Collins, Matthew and Faull, Nicholas and Forest, Chris E. and Grandey, Benjamin S. and Gryspeerdt, Edward and Highwood, Eleanor J. and Ingram, William J. and Knight, Sylvia and Lopez, Ana and Massey, Neil and McNamara, Frances and Meinshausen, Nicolai and Piani, Claudio and Rosier, Suzanne M. and Sanderson, Benjamin M. and Smith, Leonard A. and Stone, Dáithí A. and Thurston, Milo and Yamazaki, Kuniko and Hiro Yamazaki, Y. and Allen, Myles R. (2012) Broad range of 2050 warming from an observationally constrained large climate model ensemble. Nature geoscience, 5 (4). pp. 256-260. ISSN 1752-0894

2011

Khare, Shree and Smith, Leonard A. (2011) Data assimilation: a fully nonlinear approach to ensemble formation using indistinguishable states. Monthly weather review, 139 (7). pp. 2080-2097. ISSN 0027-0644

Jarman, Alex and Smith, Leonard A. (2011) Small-number statistics, common sense, and profit: challenges and non-challenges for hurricane forecasting. , London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

Smith, Leonard A. and Stern, Nicholas (2011) Uncertainty in science and its role in climate policy. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society A: mathematical, physical and engineering sciences, 369 (1956). pp. 4818-4841. ISSN 1364-503X

2010

Oreskes, Naomi and Stainforth, David A. and Smith, Leonard A. (2010) Adaptation to global warming: do climate models tell us what we need to know? Philosophy of science (proceedings), 77 (5). pp. 1012-1028. ISSN 0031-8248

Smith, Leonard A. and Cuellar, Milena C. and Du, Hailiang and Judd, Kevin (2010) Exploiting dynamical coherence: A geometric approach to parameter estimation in nonlinear models. Physics letters A, 374 (26). pp. 2618-2623. ISSN 0375-9601

Ghil, Michael and Read, Peter and Smith, Leonard A. (2010) Geophysical flows as dynamical systems: the influence of Hide's experiments. Astronomy & geophysics, 51 (4). pp. 28-4. ISSN 1366-8781

2009

Hagedorn, Renate and Smith, Leonard A. (2009) Communicating the value of probabilistic forecasts with Weather Roulette. Meteorological applications, 16 (2). pp. 143-155. ISSN 1350-4827

2008

Bröcker, Jochen and Smith, Leonard A. (2008) From ensemble forecasts to predictive distribution functions. Tellus series A: dynamic meteorology and oceanography, 60 (4). pp. 663-678. ISSN 0280-6495

Judd, Kevin and Reynolds, Carolyn A. and Rosmond, Thomas E. and Smith, Leonard A. (2008) The geometry of model error. Journal of the atmospheric sciences, 65 (6). pp. 1749-1772. ISSN 0022-4928

2007

Smith, Leonard A. (2007) Letters to the editor: unproven theories have value. Times Newspapers Ltd.

Stainforth, D. A. and Allen, M. R. and Tredger, Edward and Smith, Leonard A. (2007) Confidence, uncertainty and decision-support relevance in climate predictions. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society A: mathematical, physical and engineering sciences, 365 (1857). pp. 2145-2161. ISSN 1364-503X

Judd, Kevin and Smith, Leonard A. and Weisheimer, Antje (2007) How good is an ensemble at capturing truth?: using bounding boxes for forecast evaluation. Quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 133 (626). pp. 1309-1325. ISSN 0035-9009

Bröcker, Jochen and Smith, Leonard A. (2007) Increasing the reliability of reliability diagrams. Weather and forecasting, 22 (3). pp. 651-661. ISSN 0882-8156

Bröcker, Jochen and Smith, Leonard A. (2007) Scoring probabilistic forecasts: the importance of being proper. Weather and forecasting, 22 (2). pp. 382-388. ISSN 0882-8156

Smith, Leonard A. (2007) Chaos: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. ISBN 0192853783

2005

Roulston, Mark S and Ellepola, Jerome and von Hardenberg, Jost and Smith, Leonard A. (2005) Forecasting wave height probabilities with numerical weather prediction models. Ocean engineering, 32 (14-15). pp. 1841-1863. ISSN 0029-8018

Guerrero, Alexandra and Smith, Leonard A. (2005) A maximum likelihood estimator for long-range persistence. Physica A: statistical mechanics and its applications, 355 (2-4). pp. 619-632. ISSN 0378-4371

Weisheimer, Antje and Smith, Leonard A. and Judd, Kevin (2005) A new view of forecast skill: bounding boxes from the DEMETER ensemble seasonal forecasts. Tellus series A: dynamic meteorology and oceanography, 57 (3). pp. 265-279. ISSN 0280-6495

Stainforth, D. A. and Aina, T. and Christensen, C. and Collins, M. and Faull, N. and Frame, D. J. and Kettleborough, J. A. and Knight, S. and Martin, A. and Murphy, J. M. and Piani, C. and Sexton, D. and Smith, Leonard A. and Spicer, R. A. and Thorpe, A. J. and Allen, M. R. (2005) Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases. Nature, 433 (7024). pp. 403-406. ISSN 0028-0836

2004

Altalo, Mary G. and Smith, Leonard A. (2004) Using ensemble weather forecasts to manage utilities risk. Environmental finance, Octobe (Supple). pp. 48-49. ISSN 1468-8573

Judd, Kevin and Smith, Leonard A. (2004) Indistinguishable states II: the imperfect model scenario. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 196 (3-4). pp. 224-242. ISSN 0167-2789

Smith, Leonard A. and Hansen, James A. (2004) Extending the limits of ensemble forecast verification with the minimum spanning tree. Monthly weather review, 132 (6). pp. 1522-1528. ISSN 0027-0644

McSharry, Patrick E. and Smith, Leonard A. (2004) Consistent nonlinear dynamics: identifying model inadequacy. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 192 (1-2). pp. 1-22. ISSN 0167-2789

Golobic, I. and Pavlovic, E. and von Hardenberg, J. and Berry, M. and Nelson, R.A. and Kenning, D.B.R. and Smith, Leonard A. (2004) Comparison of a mechanistic model for nucleate boiling with experimental spatio-temporal data. Chemical engineering research and design, 82 (4). pp. 435-444. ISSN 0263-8762

Judd, Kevin and Smith, Leonard A. and Weisheimer, Antje (2004) Gradient free descent: shadowing, and state estimation using limited derivative informations. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 190 (3-4). pp. 153-166. ISSN 0167-2789

von Hardenberg, Jost and Kenning, David B. R. and Xing, Huijuan and Smith, Leonard A. (2004) Identification of nucleation site interactions. International journal of heat and fluid flow, 25 (2). pp. 298-304. ISSN 0142-727X

Kwasniok, Frank and Smith, Leonard A. (2004) Real-time construction of optimized predictions from data streams. Physical review letters, 92 (16). pp. 116-120. ISSN 0031-9007

Roulston, M.S. and Smith, Leonard A. (2004) The boy who cried wolf revisited: the impact of false alarm intolerance on cost-loss scenarios. Weather and forecasting, 19 (2). pp. 391-397. ISSN 0882-8156

2003

Guerrero, A. and Smith, Leonard A. (2003) Towards coherent estimation of the correlation dimension. Physics letters A, 318 (4-5). pp. 373-379. ISSN 0375-9601

Orrell, David and Smith, Leonard A. (2003) Visualising bifurcations in high dimensional systems: the spectral bifurcation diagram. International journal of bifurcation and chaos, 13 (10). pp. 3015-3027. ISSN 0218-1274

Roulston, M.S. and Kaplan, D.T. and Hardenberg, J. and Smith, Leonard A. (2003) Using medium-range weather forecasts to improve the value of wind energy production. Renewable energy, 28 (4). pp. 585-602. ISSN 0960-1481

McSharry, Patrick E. and Smith, Leonard A. and Tarassenko, Lionel (2003) Prediction of epileptic seizures: are nonlinear methods relevant? Nature medicine, 9 (3). pp. 241-242. ISSN 1078-8956

Roulston, M.S. and Smith, Leonard A. (2003) Combining dynamical and statistical ensembles. Tellus series A: dynamic meteorology and oceanography, 55 (1). pp. 16-30. ISSN 0280-6495

McSharry, P.E. and Smith, Leonard A. and Tarassenko, L. (2003) Comparison of predictability of epileptic seizures by a linear and a nonlinear method. IEEE transactions on biomedical engineering, 50 (5). pp. 628-633. ISSN 0018-9294

Smith, Leonard A. (2003) Predictability and chaos. In: Holton, James R. and Pyle, John and Curry, Judith A., (eds.) Encyclopedia of atmospheric sciences. Academic Press, Amsterdam, London, pp. 1777-1785. ISBN 9780122270901

McSharry, P. E. and Clifford, G. D. and Tarassenko, L. and Smith, Leonard A. (2003) A dynamical model for generating synthetic electrocardiogram signals. IEEE transactions on biomedical engineering, 50 (3). pp. 289-294. ISSN 0018-9294

Smith, Leonard A. (2003) Predictability past predictability present. In:ECMWF Seminar on Predictability (2002 : Reading, UK).

2002

McSharry, Patrick E. and Clifford, G. D. and Tarassenko, L. and Smith, Leonard A. (2002) A method for generating an artificial RR tachogram of a typical healthy human over 24-hours. Computers in cardiology, 29 pp. 225-228. ISSN 0276-6574

McSharry, P. E. and He, T. and Smith, Leonard A. and Tarassenko, L. (2002) Linear and non-linear methods for automatic seizure detection in scalp electro-encephalogram recordings. Medical & biological engineering & computing, 40 (4). pp. 447-461. ISSN 0140-0118

Roulston, Mark S. and Smith, Leonard A. (2002) Evaluating probabilistic forecasts using information theory. Monthly weather review, 130 (6). pp. 1653-1660. ISSN 0027-0644

Smith, Leonard A. (2002) What might we learn from climate forecasts? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99 (Suppl.). pp. 2487-2492. ISSN 0027-8424

McSharry, Patrick E. and Ellepola, Jerome H. and von Hardenberg, Jost and Smith, Leonard A. and Kenning, David B. R. and Judd, Kevin (2002) Spatio-temporal analysis of nucleate pool boiling: identification of nucleation sites using non-orthogonal empirical functions. International journal of heat and mass transfer, 45 (2). pp. 237-253. ISSN 0017-9310

Smith, Leonard A. and Roulston, Mark S. (2002) Weather and seasonal forecasting. In: Dischel, Robert, (ed.) Climate risk and the weather market. Risk Books, London, pp. 115-126. ISBN 9781899332526

McSharry, Patrick E. and Smith, Leonard A. (2002) Consistent nonlinear dynamics: identifying model inadequacy. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 192 (1-2). pp. 1-22. ISSN 0167-2789

2001

Gilmour, Isla and Smith, Leonard A. and Buizza, Roberto (2001) Linear regime duration: is 24 hours a long time in synoptic weather forecasting? Journal of the atmospheric sciences, 58 (22). pp. 3525-3539. ISSN 0022-4928

Hansen, James A. and Smith, Leonard A. (2001) Probabilistic noise reduction. Tellus series A: dynamic meteorology and oceanography, 53 (5). pp. 585-598. ISSN 0280-6495

Judd, Kevin and Smith, Leonard A. (2001) Indistinguishable states I: perfect model scenario. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 151 (2-4). pp. 125-141. ISSN 0167-2789

Smith, Leonard A. and Roulston, Mark S and von Hardenberg, Jost (2001) End to end ensemble forecasting: towards evaluating the economic value of an ensemble prediction system. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK

Roulston, Mark S and Ziehmann, Christine and Smith, Leonard A. (2001) A forecast reliability index from ensembles: a comparison of methods. London School of Economics and Political Science, London

Orrell, D. and Smith, Leonard A. and Barkmeijer, J. and Palmer, T. N. (2001) Model error in weather forecasting. Nonlinear processes in geophysics, 8 (6). pp. 357-371. ISSN 1023-5809

Smith, Leonard A. (2001) Disentangling uncertainty and error: on the predictability of nonlinear systems. In: Mees, Alistair I., (ed.) Nonlinear dynamics and statistics. Birkhauser, Boston, pp. 31-64. ISBN 9780817641634

2000

Smith, Leonard A. (2000) Limits to Predictability in 2000 and 2100. In:Proceedings of IEEE 2000 Adaptive Systems for Signal Processing, Communications, and Control Symposium (01 Oct - 04 Oct 2000 : Lake Louise, Alta. , Canada ).

Hansen, James A. and Smith, Leonard A. (2000) The role of operational constraints in selecting supplementary observations. Journal of the atmospheric sciences, 57 (17). pp. 2859-2871. ISSN 0022-4928

Smith, Leonard A. (2000) Feeding frenzy is short of juice. TSL Education Ltd

Ziehmann, Christine and Smith, Leonard A. and Kurths, Jürgen (2000) Localized Lyapunov exponents and the prediction of predictability. Physics letters A, 271 (4). pp. 237-251. ISSN 0375-9601

Smith, Leonard A. (2000) Rough survey of how ticks all add up. TSL Education Ltd

1999

McSharry, Patrick E. and Smith, Leonard A. (1999) Better nonlinear models from noisy data: attractors with maximum likelihood. Physical review letters, 83 (21). pp. 4285-4288. ISSN 0031-9007

Smith, Leonard A. and Ziehmann, C. and Fraedrich, K. (1999) Uncertainty dynamics and predictability in chaotic systems. Quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 125 (560). pp. 2855-2886. ISSN 0035-9009

Ziehmann, Christine and Smith, Leonard A. and Kurths, Jürgen (1999) The bootstrap and Lyapunov exponents in deterministic chaos. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 126 (1-2). pp. 49-59. ISSN 0167-2789

1998

Moroz, Irene M. and Smith, Leonard A. and Hide, Raymond (1998) Synchronized chaos in coupled double disk homopolar dynamos. International journal of bifurcation and chaos, 8 (11). pp. 2125-2133. ISSN 0218-1274

Smith, Leonard A. and McSharry, Patrick E. (1998) Just do it: reductionism, modelling and black-box forecasting. In:International Workshop on Advanced Black-Box Techniques for Nonlinear Modeling: Theory and Applications (08 - 10 July 1998 : Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium).

Smith, Leonard A. and Gilmour, Isla (1998) Enlightenment in shadows. In: Kadtke, James B and Bulsara, Adi, (eds.) Nonlinear dynamics and stochastic systems near the millennium. American Institute of Physics, New York, United States, pp. 335-340. ISBN 9781563967368

1997

Paparella, F. and Provenzale, A. and Smith, Leonard A. and Taricco, C. and Vio, R. (1997) Local random analogue prediction of nonlinear processes. Physics letters A, 235 (3). pp. 233-240. ISSN 0375-9601

Smith, Leonard A. and Gilmour, Isla (1997) Accountability and internal consistency in ensemble formation. In:Workshop on Predictability (20 - 22 October 1997 : Reading, UK).

Allen, Myles R. and Smith, Leonard A. (1997) Optimal filtering in singular spectrum analysis. Physics letters A, 234 (6). pp. 419-428. ISSN 0375-9601

1996

Allen, Myles R. and Smith, Leonard A. (1996) Monte Carlo SSA: detecting irregular oscillations in the presence of colored noise. Journal of climate, 9 (12). pp. 3373-3404. ISSN 0894-8755

1995

Smith, Leonard A. (1995) Accountability and error in ensemble prediction of baroclinic flows. In: Seminar on predictability, 4-8 September 1995. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK, pp. 351-368.

Theiler, James and Smith, Leonard A. (1995) Anomalous convergence of Lyapunov exponent estimates. Physical review E, 51 (4). pp. 3738-3741. ISSN 1539-3755

Smith, Leonard A. (1995) Locally optimized prediction of nonlinear systems: stochastic and deterministic. In: Tong, Howell, (ed.) Chaos and forecasting. World Scientific Publishing , Singapore. ISBN 9789810221263

Smith, Leonard A. (1995) A personal overview of nonlinear time-series analysis from a chaos perspective - comments. Scandinavian journal of statistics, 22 (4). pp. 435-437. ISSN 0303-6898

Ziehmann-Schlumbohm, C. and Fraedrich, K. and Smith, Leonard A. (1995) Ein internes Vorhersagbarkeitsexperiment im Lorenz-Modell. Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 4 (1). pp. 16-21. ISSN 0941-2948

1994

Smith, Leonard A. (1994) Visualizing predictability with chaotic ensembles. In: Luk, Franklin T., (ed.) Advanced signal processing: algorithms, architectures, and implementations V (proceedings volume). SPIE, Bellingham, USA, pp. 293-304. ISSN 0277786X

Smith, Leonard A. (1994) Local optimal prediction: exploiting strangeness and the variation of sensitivity to initial condition. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society A: mathematical, physical and engineering sciences, 348 (1688). pp. 371-381. ISSN 1364-503X

Smith, Leonard A. (1994) Turbulence in the River Severn: a dynamic systems approach. In: Beven, Keith J. and Chatwin, Phillip C. and Millbank, John H., (eds.) Mixing and transport in the environment : a memorial volume for Catherine M. Allen (1954-1991). J. Wiley, Chichester, UK, pp. 383-399. ISBN 9780471941422

Allen, Myles R. and Smith, Leonard A. (1994) Investigating the origins and significance of low-frequency modes of climate variability. Geophysical research letters, 21 (10). pp. 883-886. ISSN 0094-8276

1993

Smith, Leonard A. (1993) Does a meeting in Santa Fe imply chaos? In: Weigend, Andreas S. and Gershenfeld, Neil A., (eds.) Time series prediction:forecasting the future and understanding the past: proceedings of the NATO advanced research workshop on comparative time series analysis, held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 14-17, 1992. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, USA, pp. 323-344. ISBN 9780201626018

1992

Allen, Myles R. and Read, Peter L. and Smith, Leonard A. (1992) Temperature oscillations. Nature, 359 (6397). ISSN 0028-0836

Smith, Leonard A. (1992) Identification and prediction of low dimensional dynamics. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 58 (1-4). pp. 50-76. ISSN 0167-2789

Provenzale, A. and Smith, Leonard A. and Vio, R. and Murante, G. (1992) Distinguishing between low-dimensional dynamics and randomness in measured time series. Physica D: nonlinear phenomena, 58 (1-4). pp. 31-49. ISSN 0167-2789

Allen, Myles R. and Read, Peter L. and Smith, Leonard A. (1992) Temperature time-series? Nature, 355 (6362). ISSN 0028-0836

Smith, Leonard A. (1992) Comments on the paper of R Smith, estimating dimension in noisy chaotic time series. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: series B (statistical methodology), 54 (2). pp. 329-352. ISSN 1369-7412

1991

Smith, Leonard A. (1991) Applied chaos: quantifying complex systems. In: Atmanspacher, H., (ed.) Information dynamics . Plenum Press, New York, USA, pp. 97-102.

Smith, Leonard A. and Godfrey, K. and Fox, P. and Warwick, K. (1991) A new technique for fault detection in multi-sensor probes. In: International Conference on Control '91, 25-28 March 1991. The Institution, London, UK, pp. 1062-1067. ISBN 9780852965092

1990

Thieberger, R. and Spiegel, E. A. and Smith, Leonard A. (1990) The dimensions of cosmic fractals. In: Krasner, Saul, (ed.) The ubiquity of chaos . American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, USA, pp. 197-217. ISBN 9780871683502

Smith, Leonard A. (1990) Quantifying chaos through predicitve flows and maps: computing unstable periodic orbits. In: Abraham, Neal B. and Albano, Alfonso, (eds.) Measures of complexity and chaos . Plenum Press, New York, USA, pp. 359-366. ISBN 9780306433870

1988

Smith, Leonard A. (1988) Intrinsic limits on dimension calculations. Physics letters A, 133 (6). pp. 283-288. ISSN 0375-9601

1987

Smith, Leonard A. and Spiegel, E. A. (1987) Strange accumulators. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 497 (Chaoti). pp. 61-65. ISSN 0077-8923

1986

Smith, Leonard A. and Fournier, J. D. and Spiegel, E. A. (1986) Lacunarity and intermittency in fluid turbulence. Physics letters A, 114 (8-9). pp. 465-468. ISSN 0375-9601

1985

Smith, Leonard A. and Spiegel, E. A. (1985) Pattern formation by particles settling in viscous flows. Lecture notes in physics, 230 pp. 306-318. ISSN 1616-6361

1980

Green, A. E. S. and Cross, K. R. and Smith, Leonard A. (1980) Improved analytic characterization of ultraviolet skylight. Photochemistry and Photobiology, 31 (1). pp. 59-65. ISSN 0031-8655

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