| Berkeley Earth | |
| Founder: | Richard Muller and Elizabeth Muller |
| Founded Date: | 2010 |
| Location: | Berkeley, California |
| Area Served: | Global |
| Focus: | Climate science, education/communication and global warming mitigation |
| Method: | Scientific analysis |
| Former Name: | Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature |
Berkeley Earth is a Berkeley, California-based independent 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on land temperature data analysis for climate science. Berkeley Earth was founded in early 2010 (originally called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project) to address the major concerns from outside the scientific community regarding global warming and the instrumental temperature record. The project's stated aim was a "transparent approach, based on data analysis."[1] In February 2013, Berkeley Earth became an independent non-profit. In August 2013, Berkeley Earth was granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by the US government. The primary product is air temperatures over land, but they also produce a global dataset resulting from a merge of their land data with HadSST.
Berkeley Earth founder Richard A. Muller told The Guardian
Berkeley Earth has been funded by unrestricted educational grants totaling about $1,394,500.[2] Large donors include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER),[3] and the William K. Bowes Jr. Foundation.[4] The donors have no control over how Berkeley Earth conducts the research or what they publish.[5]
The team's preliminary findings, data sets and programs were published beginning in December 2012. The study addressed scientific concerns including the 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 (between the decades of the 1950s and 2000s) the land surface warmed by 0.91±0.05 °C, and their results mirror those obtained from earlier studies carried out by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Hadley Centre, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (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.
Berkeley Earth team members include:[6]
Former team members[9]
Board of Directors[10]
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 originating 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 try 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 analyze the information, and the papers undergoing peer review were also made available to the public.[11] [12] [13]
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:[11] [12] [13] [14]
The Berkeley Earth 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 outliers. The methodology also avoids traditional procedures that require long, continuous data segments, thus accommodating 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.[12]
Given project leader Muller's well-publicized concerns regarding the quality of climate change research, other critics anticipated that the Berkeley Earth study would be a vindication of their stance. For example, when the study team was announced, Anthony Watts, a climate change denialist blogger who popularized several of the issues addressed by the Berkeley Earth group study, expressed full confidence in the team's methods:
When the initial results were released, and found to support the existing consensus, the study was widely decried by deniers. Watts spoke to The New York Times, which wrote: "Mr. Watts ... contended that the study's methodology was flawed because it examined data over 60 years 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."[15] [16] Steven Mosher, a co-author of a book critical of climate scientists, also disapproved 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."[15] Stephen McIntyre, editor of Climate Audit, a climate-skeptics blog, said that "the team deserves credit for going back to the primary data and doing the work" and even though he had not had an opportunity to read the papers in detail, he questioned the analyses of urban heating and weather station quality.[17] [18]
By contrast, the study was well received by Muller's peers in climate science research. James Hansen, a leading climate scientist and head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies commented that he had not yet read the research papers but was glad Muller was looking at the issue. He said "It should help inform those who have honest skepticism about global warming."[14] Phil Jones the director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, 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."[14] 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."[18] 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."[14] The ice core research scientist Eric Steig wrote at RealClimate.org that it was unsurprising that Berkeley Earth'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".[19]
Since the publication of its papers in 2013, Berkeley Earth has broadened its scope. Berkeley Earth has three program areas of work: 1) further scientific investigations on the nature of climate change and extreme weather events, 2) an education and communications program, and 3) evaluation of mitigation efforts in developed and developing economies, with a focus on energy conservation and the use of natural gas as a bridging fuel.[20] [21] [22]
In an op-ed published in The New York Times on 28 July 2012, Muller announced further findings from the project. He said their analysis showed that average global land temperatures had increased by 2.5F-change in 250 years, with the increase in the last 50 years being 1.5F-change, and it seemed likely that this increase was entirely due to human caused greenhouse gas emissions. His opening paragraph stated:
He said that their findings were stronger than those shown in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Their analysis, set out in five scientific papers now being subjected to scrutiny by others, had used statistical methods which Robert Rohde had developed and had paid particular attention to overcoming issues that skeptics had questioned, including the urban heat island effect, poor station quality, data selection and data adjustment. In the fifth paper which they now made public, they fitted the shape of the record to various forcings including volcanoes, solar activity and sunspots. They found that the shape best matched the curve of the calculated greenhouse effect from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Muller said he still found "that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I've analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn't changed."