Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature

Highlights of 2014 - Stronger warming over sea than over land

Highlights of 2015 - Stronger warming over sea than over land

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project ("BEST") is a project to quantify global warming , which was initiated by Richard A. Muller ( University of California, Berkeley ) and his daughter Elizabeth at the beginning of 2010. After public criticism by climate deniers of existing historical temperature data, it should provide a scientifically sound representation of the situation.

procedure

For this purpose, a completely new, considerably larger database (5 × larger than before) consisting of temperature data from worldwide distributed ground stations was analyzed using specially developed mathematical methods. Well-known objections (such as the fact that so-called » heat island effects « or incorrectly applied statistical procedures would simulate warming) were specifically taken into account when developing the procedures in order to arrive at reliable statements in these areas.

On the official website of the project, all components were put up for public discussion and offered for download: In order to avoid criticism, everything from the raw data to the descriptions of the specially developed mathematical and statistical processes to the source code of the software used was disclosed.

In March 2014, BEST announced that the dataset had been expanded to include oceanic data.

team

The team, consisting of a rump team of eleven people, includes two statisticians - who say they are specialists in normalizing large, inconsistent amounts of data - and six physicists, including Nobel Prize laureate in physics Saul Perlmutter . The research team also includes climatologist Judith A. Curry .

Team leader was Richard Muller, who had expressed skepticism about the results of climate research in the past. The team was financed by climate deniers, including the Koch brothers .

Result

The investigation largely confirmed the previous results, so that the criticism of the latter was indirectly invalidated. On October 20, 2011, the result was published for discussion as a ›preliminary result‹ and 5 articles were submitted to the journal JGR Atmosphere . In the following period, all 5 articles were peer-reviewed and accepted. After finishing work in mid-2012, Muller wrote a guest article for the New York Times , in which he explained how the project and the data it gained made him from a skeptic to a staunch advocate of global warming. Among other things, he emphasized that global warming existed, the estimated warming rates were correct and that humans were almost the only cause of the warming.

See also

• Global warming controversy # Existence of global warming

Web links

• Official website
• Researchers hope to gain insight from climate change skeptics , in: Spiegel Online , November 7, 2011
• Global warming 'confirmed' Interview with Richard Muller ( Nature Climate Change ; November 6, 2011)
• Richard Muller: I was wrong on Climate Change: Interview with Richard Muller on Youtube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Methods & Results , accessed on March 5, 2014.
2. ↑ Data files , accessed March 5, 2014.
3. ↑ Link page to the source codes , accessed on March 5, 2014.
4. ^ Announcement Ocean Data, accessed March 5.
5. ↑ BEST project team accessed on March 4, 2014.
6. ^ A Berkeley physicist takes the temperature of climate change Hot topic , Fall 2011; accessed on March 5, 2014.
7. ↑ See G. Thomas Farmer, John Cook: Climate Change Science. A modern synthesis. Volume 1 - The Physical Climate. Dordrecht 2013, p. 168f.
8. ↑ Papers of the BEST study accessed on March 4, 2014.
9. ^ The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic . In: The New York Times , July 28, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2017.