Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
Encyclopedia
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project is an effort to resolve criticism of the current records of the Earth's surface temperatures by preparing an open database and analysis of these temperatures and temperature trends, to be available online, with all calculations, methods and results also to be freely available online. BEST's stated aim is a "transparent approach, based on data analysis." "Our results will include not only our best estimate for the global temperature change, but estimates of the uncertainties in the record."
BEST founder Richard A. Muller
told The Guardian
"...we are bringing the spirit of science back to a subject that has become too argumentative and too contentious," "...we are an independent, non-political, non-partisan group. We will gather the data, do the analysis, present the results and make all of it available. There will be no spin, whatever we find. We are doing this because it is the most important project in the world today. Nothing else comes close."
The BEST project is funded by unrestricted educational grants totalling (as of March 2011) about $635,000. Large donors include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
, the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER), and the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation. The donors have no control over how BEST conducts the research or what they publish.
The team's preliminary findings, data sets and programs were made available to the public in October 2011. The study addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics including urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias. The Berkeley Earth group concluded that the warming trend is real, that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911 °C, and their results mirrors those obtained from earlier studies carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), the Hadley Centre, NASA
's GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, and the Climatic Research Unit
(CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The study also found that The urban heat island
effect and poor station quality did not bias the results obtained from these earlier studies.
According to the Center for Investigative Reporting
's California Watch
project, Muller and BEST adviser Judith Curry
are both seen as climate skeptics by many in the climate science world.
The Berkeley Earth study addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics including urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias. The team's initial conclusions are the following:
The BEST analysis uses a new methodology and was tested against much of the same data as NOAA and NASA. The group uses an algorithm that attaches an automatic weighting to every data point, according to its consistency with comparable readings. The team claims this approach allows the inclusion of outlandish readings without distorting the result and standard statistical techniques were used to remove outlier
s. The methodology also avoids traditional procedures that require long, continuous data segments, thus accommodating for short sequences, such as those provided by temporary weather stations. This innovation allowed the group to compile an earlier record than its predecessors, starting from 1800, but with a high degree of uncertainty because at the time there were only two weather stations in America, just a few in Europe and one in Asia.
, editor of Climate Audit
, a blog
devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data, said that "the team deserves credit for going back to the primary data and doing the work" and even though he have not had an opportunity to read the papers in detail, he is questioning the analyses of urban heating and weather station quality.
James Hansen
, a leading climate scientist and head of NASA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
commented that he had not read the research papers but was glad Muller was looking at the issue. He said "It should help inform those who have honest scepticism about global warming." Phil Jones the director of the Climatic Research Unit
(CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said: "I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published. These initial findings are very encouraging and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal." Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University
, commented that "...they get the same result that everyone else has gotten," and "that said, I think it's at least useful to see that even a critic like Muller, when he takes an honest look, finds that climate science is robust." Peter Thorne, from the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites in North Carolina and chair of the International Surface Temperature Initiative, said: "This takes a very distinct approach to the problem and comes up with the same answer, and that builds confidence that pre-existing estimates are in the right ballpark. There is very substantial value in having multiple groups looking at the same problem in different ways." Scientists writing at the RealClimate.org noted that it was unsurprising that BEST's results matched previous results so well. "Any of various simple statistical analyses of the freely available data ...show... that it was very very unlikely that the results would change," they wrote.
BEST founder Richard A. Muller
Richard A. Muller
Richard A. Muller is a noted American professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.-Career:...
told The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
"...we are bringing the spirit of science back to a subject that has become too argumentative and too contentious," "...we are an independent, non-political, non-partisan group. We will gather the data, do the analysis, present the results and make all of it available. There will be no spin, whatever we find. We are doing this because it is the most important project in the world today. Nothing else comes close."
The BEST project is funded by unrestricted educational grants totalling (as of March 2011) about $635,000. Large donors include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
, the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER), and the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation. The donors have no control over how BEST conducts the research or what they publish.
The team's preliminary findings, data sets and programs were made available to the public in October 2011. The study addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics including urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias. The Berkeley Earth group concluded that the warming trend is real, that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911 °C, and their results mirrors those obtained from earlier studies carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...
(NOAA), the Hadley Centre, NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
's GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, and the Climatic Research Unit
Climatic Research Unit
The Climatic Research Unit is a component of the University of East Anglia and is one of the leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change....
(CRU) at the University of East Anglia. The study also found that The urban heat island
Urban heat island
An urban heat island is a metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas. The phenomenon was first investigated and described by Luke Howard in the 1810s, although he was not the one to name the phenomenon. The temperature difference usually is larger at night...
effect and poor station quality did not bias the results obtained from these earlier studies.
Scientific team
Berkeley Earth team members include:- Richard A. MullerRichard A. MullerRichard A. Muller is a noted American professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.-Career:...
, founder and Scientific Director. Professor of PhysicsPhysicsPhysics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, UCB and Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryLawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryThe Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
(LBNL). Muller is a member of the JASON Defense Advisory GroupJASON Defense Advisory GroupJASON is an independent group of scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology. The group was first created as a way to get a younger generation of scientists—that is, not the older Los Alamos and MIT Radiation Laboratory alumni—involved in advising the...
. - Robert Rohde, lead scientist. Ph.D. in physics, University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
(UCB). Rohde's scientific interests include earth scienceEarth scienceEarth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...
s, climatologyClimatologyClimatology is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time, and is a branch of the atmospheric sciences...
, and scientific graphics. Rohde is the founder of Global Warming Art. - David Brillinger, statistical scientist. Professor of StatisticsStatisticsStatistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
at UCB. A contributor to the theory of time seriesTime seriesIn statistics, signal processing, econometrics and mathematical finance, a time series is a sequence of data points, measured typically at successive times spaced at uniform time intervals. Examples of time series are the daily closing value of the Dow Jones index or the annual flow volume of the...
analysis. - Judith CurryJudith CurryJudith A. Curry is an American climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, and the use of unmanned aerial...
, climatologist and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of TechnologyGeorgia Institute of TechnologyThe Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...
. - Robert Jacobsen, Professor of Physics at UCB and an expert in analyses of large data sets.
- Saul PerlmutterSaul PerlmutterSaul Perlmutter is an American astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of...
, Nobel PrizeNobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
-winning astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor of Physics at UCB. - Arthur H. Rosenfeld, Professor of Physics at UCB and former California Energy CommissionCalifornia Energy CommissionThe California Energy Commission is California’s primary energy policy and planning agency. Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission has responsibility for activities that include forecasting future energy needs, promoting energy efficiency through appliance and building...
er. Research he directed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory led to the development of compact fluorescent lampCompact fluorescent lampA compact fluorescent lamp , also called compact fluorescent light, energy-saving light, and compact fluorescent tube, is a fluorescent lamp designed to replace an incandescent lamp; some types fit into light fixtures formerly used for incandescent lamps...
s. - Charlotte Wickham, Statistical Scientist.
- Jonathan Wurtele, Professor of Physics at UCB and Senior Scientist, LBNL
- Elizabeth Muller, founder and Executive Director
According to the Center for Investigative Reporting
Center for Investigative Reporting
The Center for Investigative Reporting is a non-profit journalism organization located in Berkeley, California. It was founded in 1977 by Lowell Bergman, , and David Weir to reveal injustice and abuse of power through the tools of journalism....
's California Watch
California Watch
California Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan investigative reporting group operated by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Writers and editors at the news organization track a variety of issues, including money and politics, the environment, health and welfare, public safety and...
project, Muller and BEST adviser Judith Curry
Judith Curry
Judith A. Curry is an American climatologist and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, and the use of unmanned aerial...
are both seen as climate skeptics by many in the climate science world.
Initial results
After completing the analysis of the full land temperature data set, consisting of more than 1.6 billion temperature measurements dating back to the 1800s from 15 sources around the world, and originated from more than 39,000 temperature stations worldwide, the group submitted four papers for peer-review and publication in scientific journals. The Berkeley Earth study did not assess temperature changes in the oceans, nor tried to assess how much of the observed warming is due to human action. The Berkeley Earth team also released the preliminary findings to the public on October 20, 2011 in order to promote additional scrutiny. The data sets and programs used to analyzed the information, and the papers undergoing peer review were also made available to the public.The Berkeley Earth study addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics including urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias. The team's initial conclusions are the following:
- The urban heat islandUrban heat islandAn urban heat island is a metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas. The phenomenon was first investigated and described by Luke Howard in the 1810s, although he was not the one to name the phenomenon. The temperature difference usually is larger at night...
effect and poor station quality did not bias the results obtained from earlier studies carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationNational Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , pronounced , like "noah", is a scientific agency within the United States Department of Commerce focused on the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere...
(NOAA), the Hadley Centre and NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
's GISS Surface Temperature Analysis. The team found that the urban heat island effect is locally large and real, but does not contribute significantly to the average land temperature rise, as the planet's urban regions amount to less than 1% of the land area. The study also found that while stations considered "poor" might be less accurate, they recorded the same average warming trend. - Global temperatures closely matched previous studies from NASA GISS, NOAA and the Hadley Centre, that have found global warming trends. The Berkely Earth group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C, just 2% less than NOAA’s estimate. The team scientific director stated that "...this confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."
- About 1/3 of temperature sites around the world reported global cooling over the past 70 years (including much of the United States and northern Europe). But 2/3 of the sites show warming. Individual temperature histories reported from a single location are frequently noisy and/or unreliable, and it is always necessary to compare and combine many records to understand the true pattern of global warming.
- The Atlantic multidecadal oscillationAtlantic Multidecadal OscillationThe Atlantic multidecadal oscillation is a mode of variability occurring in the North Atlantic Ocean and which has its principal expression in the sea surface temperature field...
(AMO) has played a larger role than previously thought. The El Niño-Southern OscillationEl Niño-Southern OscillationEl Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a quasiperiodic climate pattern that occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean roughly every five years...
(ENSO) is generally thought to be the main reason for inter-annual warming or cooling, but the Berkeley Earth team's analysis found that the global temperature correlates more closely with the state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation index, which is a measure of sea surface temperature in the north Atlantic.
The BEST analysis uses a new methodology and was tested against much of the same data as NOAA and NASA. The group uses an algorithm that attaches an automatic weighting to every data point, according to its consistency with comparable readings. The team claims this approach allows the inclusion of outlandish readings without distorting the result and standard statistical techniques were used to remove outlier
Outlier
In statistics, an outlier is an observation that is numerically distant from the rest of the data. Grubbs defined an outlier as: An outlying observation, or outlier, is one that appears to deviate markedly from other members of the sample in which it occurs....
s. The methodology also avoids traditional procedures that require long, continuous data segments, thus accommodating for short sequences, such as those provided by temporary weather stations. This innovation allowed the group to compile an earlier record than its predecessors, starting from 1800, but with a high degree of uncertainty because at the time there were only two weather stations in America, just a few in Europe and one in Asia.
Reactions
Anthony Watts, who popularized several of the issues addressed by the Berkeley Earth group study, spoke to the New York Times, which wrote: "Mr. Watts ... contended that the study’s methodology was flawed because it examined data over a 60-year period instead of the 30-year-one that was the basis for his research and some other peer-reviewed studies. He also noted that the report had not yet been peer-reviewed and cited spelling errors as proof of sloppiness." Steven Mosher, a co-author of a book critical of climate scientists, did not give his seal of approval, saying that the study still lacked transparency. He said: “I’m not happy until the code is released and released in a language that people can use freely.” Stephen McIntyreStephen McIntyre
Stephen McIntyre is a Canadian mathematician, former minerals prospector, and semi-retired mining consultant who is best known as the founder and editor of Climate Audit, a blog devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data...
, editor of Climate Audit
Climate Audit
Climate Audit is a blog which was founded on 31 January 2005 by Steve Mcintyre.The New York Times has called it "a popular skeptics’ blog".The website has won the 2007 Best Science Blog award and was a runner up in the same category in 2008.-Founding:...
, a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
devoted to the analysis and discussion of climate data, said that "the team deserves credit for going back to the primary data and doing the work" and even though he have not had an opportunity to read the papers in detail, he is questioning the analyses of urban heating and weather station quality.
James Hansen
James Hansen
James E. Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has held this position since 1981...
, a leading climate scientist and head of NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies , at Columbia University in New York City, is a component laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Earth-Sun Exploration Division and a unit of The Earth Institute at Columbia University...
commented that he had not read the research papers but was glad Muller was looking at the issue. He said "It should help inform those who have honest scepticism about global warming." Phil Jones the director of the Climatic Research Unit
Climatic Research Unit
The Climatic Research Unit is a component of the University of East Anglia and is one of the leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change....
(CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), said: "I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published. These initial findings are very encouraging and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal." Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...
, commented that "...they get the same result that everyone else has gotten," and "that said, I think it's at least useful to see that even a critic like Muller, when he takes an honest look, finds that climate science is robust." Peter Thorne, from the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites in North Carolina and chair of the International Surface Temperature Initiative, said: "This takes a very distinct approach to the problem and comes up with the same answer, and that builds confidence that pre-existing estimates are in the right ballpark. There is very substantial value in having multiple groups looking at the same problem in different ways." Scientists writing at the RealClimate.org noted that it was unsurprising that BEST's results matched previous results so well. "Any of various simple statistical analyses of the freely available data ...show... that it was very very unlikely that the results would change," they wrote.
See also
- Anthony Watts (blogger)
- Global warming controversyGlobal warming controversyGlobal warming controversy refers to a variety of disputes, significantly more pronounced in the popular media than in the scientific literature, regarding the nature, causes, and consequences of global warming...
- Instrumental temperature recordInstrumental temperature recordThe instrumental temperature record shows fluctuations of the temperature of the global land surface and oceans. This data is collected from several thousand meteorological stations, Antarctic research stations and satellite observations of sea-surface temperature. Currently, the longest-running...
- Urban heat islandUrban heat islandAn urban heat island is a metropolitan area which is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas. The phenomenon was first investigated and described by Luke Howard in the 1810s, although he was not the one to name the phenomenon. The temperature difference usually is larger at night...
External links
- Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) home page
- Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process (paper under peer-review as of 2011-10-20)
- Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average (paper under peer-review as of 2011-10-20)
- Earth Atmospheric Land Surface Temperature and Station Quality in the United States (paper under peer-review as of 2011-10-20)
- Decadal Variations in the Global Atmospheric Land Temperatures (paper under peer-review as of 2011-10-20)