David Stainforth

Centre member

David is based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he is a Senior Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment|.

Background

David is a physicist by training and has many years' experience of climate modelling.

While a researcher at Oxford University, he co-founded and was chief scientist of the climateprediction.net project, the world's largest climate modelling experiment.

David has been both a NERC Research Fellow and a Tyndall Research Fellow at Oxford University.

Research interests

How to extract robust and useful information about future climate, and climate related phenomena, from modelling experiments;
How to design climate modelling experiments and link climate science to real-world decision making in such a way as to be of value to industry, policy makers and wider society.

Media articles

2012

Policy: clarify the limits of climate models| (PDF, 219KB)
David A Stainforth and Leonard A. Smith, Nature (correspondence), 13 September

2011

Questions and answers with Dr David Stainforth
|David Stainforth, Royal Society, July

2010

Climate science in the spotlight may not be such a bad thing
|Dave Stainforth, The Guardian, 12 February

Research articles

2013

Chapman, S.C., Stainforth, D.A., and Watkins, N.W. May 2013. On estimating local long-term climate trends. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society series A, v. 371. External link to full article|

2012

Millner, A., Calel, R., Stainforth, D.A., and MacKerron, G. November 2012. Do probabilistic expert elicitations capture scientists’ uncertainty about climate change? Climatic Change. External link to full article|

2010

Oreskes, N., Stainforth, D.A., and Smith, L.A. December 2010. Adaptation to global warming: do climate models tell us what we need to know? Philosophy of Science, v.77, pp.1012-1028.

Stainforth, D. August 2010. Probabilistic regional and seasonal predictions of twenty-first century temperature and precipitation. Working paper, Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, Leeds and London, UK. Download PDF of paper| (439KB)

Stainforth, D. January 2010. Estimating uncertainty in future climate projections. Workshop on Nonstationarity, Hydrologic Frequency Analysis, and Water Management (Colorado Water Institute Information Series, no.109) [O J Rolf, J Kiang and R Waskom (eds.)]. Colorado Water Institute, Colorado. External link to full article
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2009

Harrison, S., and Stainforth, D.A. March 2009. Predicting climate change: lessons from reductionism, emergence, and the past. Eos, v.90, pp.111-112. External link to full article

|2008

Sanderson, B.M., Knutti, R., Aina, T., Christensen, C., Faull, N., Frame, D.J., Ingram, W.J., Piani, C., Stainforth, D.A., Stone, D.A., and Allen, M.R. June 2008. Constraints on model response to greenhouse gas forcing and the role of subgrid-scale processes. Journal of Climate, v.21, pp.2384-2400. External link to full article|

Policy articles

2013

Fankhauser, S., Ranger, N., Colmer, J., Fisher, S., Surminski, S., Stainforth, D., and Williamson, A. March 2013. An Independent National Adaptation Programme for England. Policy brief, Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, Leeds and London, UK. External link to full report| (PDF, 624KB) | Appendices| (PDF, 700KB)