"BEST" temperature record study surprises skeptics
Last month, a team of scientists from Berkeley called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) group released results from research they did on the Earth surface temperature record. Though there have been numerous studies and time series created on surface temperature, they wanted to take an independent look at the data and create a new temperature record. What they found was surprising to some in the "skeptic" community, though not surprising to most climate scientists.
Dr. Richard Muller is the founder and scientific director of the BEST group, which is made up of physicists, statisticians, and climatologists. Though Dr. Muller has been described as a climate change "skeptic" and "denialist," he has an impressive and extensive curriculum vitae in physics, including being a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, and a MacArther Foundation Fellow, and the recipient of the National Science Foundation Alan T. Altman Award. His skepticism is evidenced most frequently in the press by his funding from the Koch brothers, who have made billions of dollars in the oil industry. The BEST project also accepted funding from Koch, among many other organizations, though the funders had no influence over methodology or results, which is almost always the case in peer reviewed science. The BEST group also includes Dr. Judith Curry, the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, who has recently been vocal about the need for a more transparent scientific process, and more eyes on the data, especially when it comes to research on man-made global warming and the temperature record.
The BEST team was open with their hypothesis: they expected to find that, when using temperature stations that other organizations failed to include, the warming trend wouldn't be present, or at least not as dramatic. Their objectives are listed on their website (which also includes access to data and submitted papers), which include:
-- Merging land surface data into a raw dataset that's in a common format and easy to use
-- Developing new and potentially better ways of processing, average, and merging the data
-- Creating a new global temperature record
-- To provide not only the raw data and the resulting record, but also the code and tools used to get there, making the process as transparent as possible
Figure 1. Locations of the the 39,028 temperature stations in the Berkeley Earth data set (blue). Stations classified as rural are plotted on top in black.
The BEST project collaborators combined data from 15 sources that, wherever possible, did not include the tried and true data that the "big three" (NASA, NOAA, or HadCRU) used in their analyses, mainly the GHCN Monthly dataset, which is widely used because of its requirements that the each station in the data set have plenty of observations, no gaps, and no erroneous data. However, the BEST project was born to create a new global surface temperature record, and to "see what you get" if you use observations that other institutions have weeded out. BEST looked at data from 39,028 different temperature measurement stations from around the globe (Figure 1), and developed an averaging process to merge the stations into one record, which you see below in comparison to previous records that have been constructed.
Figure 2. Temperature time series from the big three: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science (NASA GISS, blue), NOAA (green), and the Hadley Centre and Climate Research Unit of East Anglia (HadCRU, red) along with the results from the BEST project (black).
The result was a new land surface temperature series to be added to the well-cited records of NOAA, NASA, and HadCRU, in addition to some truly independent, amateur compilations. The new temperature record agrees with the records from "the big three," and agrees with them on a warming of 1°C since 1950. BEST also addressed concerns raised by the skeptic community about station bias and urban heat island effect. They conclude that the urban heat island effect does not contribute significantly to the land temperature rise, given that urban area is only 1% of the land area in the record. Also, they looked at the stations that Anthony Watts has reported as "poor" quality, and have found that they also showed the same warming as the stations that were reported as "OK." This helps to show that temperature stations were not "cherry picked" in previous studies for warming trends, but for honest station quality.
The addition of another (eventually) peer-reviewed temperature series is good, and more eyes looking at the data is good, but the result is not surprising. However, it might have changed the minds of some skeptics who have been wanting to see an analysis from scientists that they find trustworthy. I think Dr. Muller sums their results up nicely in his Wall Street Journal opinion article:
When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.
The BEST project has four papers out for review in various journals. Having released the results to the public eye before undergoing the scrutiny of peer review, they've also made some updates to the analysis since these papers were submitted, thanks to a peer review process of its own: the internet.
Links and references:
Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature
BEST FAQ
BEST Press Release
Angela
Reader Comments
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I'd be interested to see some predictions of what the average temperatures will be in the future and what the impact of that climate change will be.
;)}
I doubt that those predictions will be found in anyone's jeans but, I could be wrong.
Ah, well.
So, when do you think we will see an uprising similar to the 'occupy' thing, demanding action on the State of Climate?
I checked in my jeans.
The results were inconclusive.
My best guess, pottery?
In the U.S.? - No time soon.
Around the world? - I think we are seeing the beginning days of this now. I am just not certain that the current protestors have tied it all together yet. ... They will.
I checked my jeans as well, pottery. Same answer here. I doubt that any of the jeans that are advertised in 4jeans's link will prove to be beneficial at all.
Do they know that they could pay to advertise on banners here and not get banned for spamming???
My thinking too.
Interesting times.
In the meantime, beware of Greeks, bearing gifts!
:}:}}
BBL>>>>>>>>>
Ox hater.
:))
Looming gaps in satellite coverage challenge sustained climate observation.
The next generation of Earth-observing satellites will not be ready in time for a seamless transition from the current generation.NOAA Climate scientists warn that critical gaps in climate data could open up after the current generation of Earth-observation satellites comes to the end of its life, with the next generation nowhere near ready to take over.
The problem is exacerbated by the lack of an adequate replacement for a pair of Earth-observation satellites, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory, which failed on launch in the past two years.
Earth-observation programmes will fail to provide the data continuity required for climate science unless they are more adequately managed and supported, Kevin Trenberth, a senior researcher at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told the World Climate Research Programme conference in Denver, Colorado, this week. "We cannot manage what we can't measure," he says.
An asteroid a quarter-mile-wide will, astronomically speaking, narrowly miss Earth next week.
And while it is the closest an asteroid this size has come to the home planet since 1976, there's no need to call Bruce Willis ... yet.
"There is no chance that this object will collide with the Earth or moon," Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program office, told Reuters.
But that doesn't mean the asteroid -- named 2005 YU55 -- won't be a threat to earth in the future.
Lance Benner, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a video from NASA (available below) that scientists haven't been able to reliably compute the asteroid's path beyond a couple of hundred years from now.
At its closest point, the space rock will be about 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) away, which is 0.85 the distance between the moon and the Earth. NASA says that the asteroid will reach this point at 6:28 p.m. EST on Tuesday.
"In effect, it'll be moving straight at us from one direction, and then go whizzing by straight away from us in the other direction," Benner said.
An asteroid this size -- which, according to Scientific American is larger than an aircraft carrier -- would cause widespread damage if it were to hit Earth, however. The Associated Press spoke to Jay Melosh, a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University, who said that the asteroid would create a four-mile wide crater 1,700 feet deep. It could cause 70-foot tsunami waves and shake the ground like a magnitude-7 earthquake.
Even though the asteroid will be inside the orbit of the moon, NASA said that the space rock's gravitational pull shouldn't have any "detectable effect" on Earth's tectonic plates or tides.
Yeomans told HuffPost that the flyby will give astronomers a great view of 2005 YU55 and is an opportunity to do research into the asteroid's composition. He said that it's a C-Type asteroid, which means it contains carbon-based minerals which could potentially be used in future space exploration.
"These objects are important for science ... they're potential resources for raw materials in space that we may wish to take advantage of some day," he said.
The New York Times reported last month on proposed fuel stations in space that one study says could put astronauts on an asteroid by 2024.
Link
Link
And your point is? How do you know that Roman wars and setting fires didn't cause this?
Did you take the time to read the comments section?
A refresher course may due for you:
Link
And your point is? How do you know that Roman wars and setting fires didn't cause this?
I was quoting JBastardi. I was not referencing your post.
I don't know that Roman wars and setting fires didn't cause this. I was questioning the science being used.
LOL I have a law degree. Maybe you should take a history course. In the not so distant past, communists were considered a threat to our country. They actually were, and still are. Our Constitution has been so perverted by liberal justices on the Supreme Court that now "freedom of speech" can mean just about anything. Communists are "terrorists" by definition of our democracy. They are the ones who should be rounded up and jailed because they support the ideologies of our gravest enemies.
I do not have any problem with your comments on communists. My problem is your comments on the protestors and using a flamethrower on them. The U.S. Constitution gives us a Bill of Rights that allows for us to protest our government. ... You seemed to have forgotten that part. ... BTW, we are not a police state. Our military falls under civilian rule. Again, this is in our Constitution. I thought these items may have slipped your mind and that is why a suggested a refresher course. Of course I do realize that you did not suggest you would do this while still in uniform. I was just warding off any possibility that you may wish to send in the military.
Even with this said, I due fully respect you for your service to this country.
Energy cannot be destroyed, just transferred
The Constitution only prohibits "quartering of troops." The Posse Comitatus Act (which wasn't ratified until around 1878) somewhat limits military law enforcement, but I wouldn't be opposed to using the military enforcing our borders. The Act only applied to certain branches of the military and does not include Homeland Security or the Coast Guard.
Homeland Security is a new form of animal and the Constitution was bent, to say the least, to set it up.
United States Coast Guard Mission Statement
The Coast Guard has been brought in to defend our shorelines and do enemy patrols during times of war.
Added - The President of the United States of America also serves as Commander and Chief over the military. Civilian rule over the military.
I understand your redundant statement: "civilian rule over the military," but you've never demonstrated the prohibition on the military enforcing the law in America.
The Koch brothers help to fund the BEST study. I would imagine that Muller stood to gain much more "green" by coming back with evidence on their side of the "debate". JMO
Article 4
Section 4
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican
Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on
Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature
cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
Peaceful demonstrations and protests do not warrant military force. In fact, our Constitution does not allow for the military to be used against domestic peaceful protests or demonstrations. Domestic "violence" would have to be demonstrated.
Amendment 1
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the Government for a redress of grievances.
I would say that severely limits using military force against peaceful demonstrations as well. Two examples of why we do not use the military against peaceful demonstrations.
Next?
Excerpt:
Civilian control is often seen as a prerequisite feature of a stable, liberal democracy. Use of the term in scholarly analyses tends to take place in the context of a democracy governed by elected officials, though the subordination of the military to political control is not unique to these societies. One example is the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong stated that "Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party," reflecting the primacy of the Communist Party of China (and communist parties in general) as decision-makers in Marxist-Leninist and Maoist theories of democratic centralism.[2]
Energy can not be created nor destroyed but it can be transformed from one form to another.
from Wall Street Journal
By FRED SINGER
Last month the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project released the findings of its extensive study on global land temperatures over the past century. Physics professor Richard Muller, who led the study, heralded the findings with a number of controversial statements in the press, including an op-ed in this newspaper titled "The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism." And yet Mr. Muller remains a true skeptic%u2014a searcher for scientific truth. I congratulate Mr. Muller and his Berkeley Earth team for undertaking this difficult task in the realm of climate.
The Berkeley study reported a warming trend of about 1%uFFFD Celsius since 1950, even greater than the warming reported by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I disagree with this result, which perhaps makes me a little more of a skeptic than Mr. Muller.
Mr. Muller has been brutally frank about the poor quality of the weather-station data, noting that 70% of U.S. stations involve uncertainties of between two and five degrees Celsius. One could interpret the Berkeley study's results as confirmation of earlier studies and of the IPCC's conclusions, despite the poor quality of the stations used. But perhaps the issue is that the Berkeley study and the ones that came before suffer from common errors. I suspect that the temperature records still are affected by the urban heat-island effect%u2014a term given to any local warming, whatever its cause%u2014despite efforts to correct for this. The urban heat-island effect could include heat produced not only in urban areas, but also due to changes in land use or poor station siting. Therefore, I suggest additional tests:
1. Disassemble the "global average" temperature to get a better picture of what's going on regionally. This could involve plotting both the IPCC's and the Berkeley study's data only for tropical regions, separating the northern and southern hemispheres and testing for seasonal variation and differences between day and night.
Enlarge Image
Close
Corbis
2. Better describe what we can think of as the demographics of weather stations, a major source of possible error. The IPCC used 6,000 stations in 1970 and only about 2,000 in 2000. Let's examine their latitude, altitude and possible urbanization, and see if there have been major changes in the stations sampled between 1970 and 2000. For example, it is very likely that airports were used as temperature stations in both 1970 and 2000, because airport stations are generally of high quality. But airports are likely warming rapidly because of increasing traffic and urbanization. So if the number of airport stations remained constant at, say, 1,200 over that 30-year interval, the warming observed there might have increased between 20% and 60% over the same period of time, thereby producing an artificial warming trend.
3. The Berkeley study used a total of 39,000 weather stations, an impressive number. But again, we need to know if that number changed significantly between 1970 and 2000, and how the demographics of the stations changed%u2014both for stations that showed cooling and for those that showed warming.
But the main reason that I am skeptical about the IPCC, and now the Berkeley, findings, is that they disagree with most every other data source I can find. I confine this critique to the period between 1978 and 1997, thereby avoiding the Super El Ni%uFFFDo of 1998 that had nothing to do with greenhouse gases or other human influences.
Contrary to both global-warming theory and climate models, data from weather satellites show no atmospheric temperature increase over this period, and neither do the entirely independent radiosondes carried in weather balloons. The Berkeley study confined its findings to land temperatures as recorded by weather stations. Yet oceans cover 71% of the earth's surface, and the marine atmosphere shows no warming trend. The absence of warming is in accord with the theory that climate is heavily impacted by solar variability, and agrees with the solar data presented in a 2007 paper by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A.
Moreover, independent data using temperature proxies%u2014various non-thermometer sources such as tree rings, ocean and lake sediments, ice cores, stalagmites, and so on%u2014also support an absence of warming between 1978 and 1997. Coral data also show no pronounced warming trend of the sea surface, and there are good reasons to believe that reported sea-surface warming is an artifact of thermometer measurements.
The IPCC's 2007 Summary for Policy makers claims that "Most of the observed increase in global average [surface] temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [90-99% sure] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." While Mr. Muller now seems to agree that there has been such global average warming since the mid-20th century, he nonetheless ended his op-ed by disclaiming that he knows the cause of any temperature increase. Moreover, the Berkeley team's research paper comments: "The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated." I commend Mr. Muller and his team for their honesty and skepticism.
Mr. Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, with specialties in atmospheric and space physics.
It is often stated that the effects on the Global Averages brought about by 'heat islands' will sway the averages toward the plus side of the temp. findings, and that this is wrong.
But I cannot help but wonder why we would expect to get a more 'accurate' reading if we sited all the temp sensors in green grassy fields, and ignore the fact that in reality we have covered large portions of the planet in concrete etc.
Surely, it would not be 'accurate' to ignore this influence?
Isn't this the same SCOTUS that declared corporations were people and had freedom of speech and that therefore lobbying could not be limited or banned?
As long as you're taking a flame thrower to your fellow Americans as a way to feel better about yourself, take out a few corporations and their protests as well - or is the fact that they drive nice cars and can buy and sell your soul confusing you?
You are incorrect. What is at issue is whether or not CO2 is the culprit and to what extent. We know man, by heat island effect, has a local effect on temperature. If that effect is the cause of higher temperature readings, then using readings that are affected by heat island effect don't give a balanced set of data.
If temperatures not affected by heat island effect are stable or dropping, it would be hard to believe that CO2, which is distributed throughout the atmosphere, would be the culprit to the extent portrayed.
The BEAST 14 Most Heinous Climate Villains
Some of the bastards responsible for subverting public understanding of climate change
THE SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE IS PRETTY BASIC: humans dig up fossilized carbon to fuel power plants and internal combustion machines, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Result: greenhouse effect global heating. Around 50% of all the species on the planet are predicted to become extinct by 2100 in the CO2-as-usual model. Our own species will face drought, famine, rising tides, soaring temperatures, calamity and chaos. Hundreds of millions will become climate refugees. Billions may die from starvation, genocide and war. We have precious little time to mitigate this looming global catastrophe.
5) Fred Singer, University of Virginia
Misdeeds: For the last 60 years, Singer’s pimped his PhD credentials to any and every industry in need of phony science. He’s slithered seamlessly from denying that smoking causes cancer to saying that DDT is harmless to “raising questions about and undercutting the ‘prevailing scientific wisdom’” of climate change. Glacier data he later attributed to his wife was denounced as “complete bullshit” by the Glacier Monitoring Service.
Corporate teats: Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sun Oil, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Petroleum Institute and the Heartland Institute.
Most egregious lie: “55% of glaciers have gained mass in the last 30 years.
(Not to mention one often overlooked point: trying to claim that urban heating is evidence that there is no warming seems more than a little illogical, and somewhat akin to saying, "Yeah, I weigh 50 pounds more than I did a year ago. But if you don't count the 20 pounds I've gained from eating three Big Macs everyday for breakfast, I've only put on 30 pounds.")
Yes! From Dirty to Clean is a transformation.
Don't you think, in a long period of time for man--and a short time for a planet, that the Earth will cool again after it has warmed, then warm again, then cool again?
Not so long as we keep filling the air with greenhouse gases, no. We have upset the natural order of things; the balance is now fa off kilter, and getting worse.
Yes Fred Singer has been very successful... to spreading the doubt about climate change.
The climate has no political agenda but if you think that this has to do with a "socialists and left wing wackos agenda" I suppose you can show me some proof that support your claim, and that I am wrong about this below:
5) Fred Singer, University of Virginia
Misdeeds: For the last 60 years, Singer's pimped his PhD credentials to any and every industry in need of phony science. He's slithered seamlessly from denying that smoking causes cancer to saying that DDT is harmless to "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom" of climate change. Glacier data he later attributed to his wife was denounced as "complete bullshit" by the Glacier Monitoring Service.
Corporate teats: Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sun Oil, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Petroleum Institute and the Heartland Institute.
Most egregious lie: "55% of glaciers have gained mass in the last 30 years.
Among climatologists, yes--but that's preaching to the choir anyway. I don't think this heralds any sea-change in public perception of this issue, alas. Talk to the average man on the street about BEST and GISS and HadCRU and you will most likely get blank stares. This post does a good job of summarizing the issue, but few outside the tiny Wunderground community will even read it. The "war" will be truly won only when public perception changes in the face of the undeniable. If the cigarette-smoking story is a good historical template, that may yet be decades down the road.
Is it really? What is the perfect setting for a planet 93 million miles from it's star, as far as greenhouse gases go? Is controlling the thermostat of an entire planet possible?
How about this:
Perhaps man's influences on the order of things IS natural.
Somehow I get the image of a Medicine Man doing a rain dance for the Gods.
To upset. Eventually.
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