"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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Keep attacking the messenger, not the message. That's all you ever do. Rugged individualism is what made America and all you liberals want to do is destroy it. If you hate what made this country great, why don't you go to Russia or China. You'll fit in well. On another note, Mikey Mann is still doing his best to cover his fraud:
Link
So now you accuse me of "attacking the messenger" after you've posted many comments today accusing Michael Mann (and James Hansen) of wrongdoing, though you've no truthful basis for doing so?
Got it.
That's a laugh coming from the guy who thinks global warming is a giant conspiracy to take away his lifetime supply of tinfoil.
I don't have any evidence that he is paid, how could? I have no idea who he really is and I really don't care.
However, characterizing him by his comments:
He comes on here with a cliche and a link and disappears.
There is no debate except 'poo poo head' type GOP/Tea party name calling.
He can't handle any debate that is actually content based.
So the question is: what does he get out of it? The only answers I can think of are: trolling and as part of his job.
The scenario I imagine is that he has contracted with one or more of the oil funded think tanks to spam any intelligent discussion. He doesn't need to have content because the oil boys know there isn't any. They are after the lowbrow votes and all they need is 'plausible deniability' [Reagan, right?]. The reason I make this difference is that others with similar opinions, while not having much more content, do at least seem to spend time debating. It is a subjective difference though, nothing to really point at as evidence.
On this site, people like Nea and others rip his little links to pieces and all he replies with are pseudo concservative cliches. Hence why I think he is professional (in the limited sense of hte word meaning 'getting paid'). If he had the time, he should be honoring the spirit of his contract rather than the letter. However, he honors the letter which is to post a certain number of posts per week with a certain number of links. To me, it is the best explanation. I can't believe he is one of right wingnuts sitting in his underwear masterbating to Kock brothers picture and surfing the internet. I am sure with all the websites out there discussing global warming, he rarely has enough time to do more than just post and run.
Someone with some time to waste and computer skills could go back through his posts and see if they fit a quota pattern. Personally I don't care. The evidence of global warming is so strong that already the denialsts have retreated into "global warming is real but it is not man's fault". Soon the problems will be so big the debate will be moot.
I think JB and his ilk are traitors and scum, especially from a patriotic pro American point of view. What they will manage to do is damage America by slowing down our progress towards the new technologies of the next 20-30 years, that does make me angry.
Sounds like another "Legal Defense Fund" in the works.
Any agency afraid of a FOI filing...speaks volumes.
It's time for sworn testimony vs peer review to become a reality.
Throw out the trash and the Science of Climate Change will gain it's well deserved credibility.
"I say so" is for children.
Sort of like can't teach an old dog new tricks.
The FOIA was written to allow open access to government info; it wasn't designed to be abused as a means of harassment. There may be legitimate FOI requests being made of climate scientists and organizations, but those are few and far between; a brief look at the application of those requests vis-a-vis climate science clearly shows that most of them are made with the express purpose of intimidating climate scientists and slowing down their work.
For instance, some climatologists will receive repeated requests for every draft of every science paper before it was published, including annotations explaining why changes were made between successive versions. And when time and money is spent complying with one request, another will follow right on its tail. Those aren't honest inquiries made to ensure open government; those are abuses of the system intended solely to stop the spread of truth.
Though they're long past feeling any such thing, those who misuse the system that way should be deeply ashamed.
I have this plan for tunnels...
had to say that : ) Seriously though, I don't have a plan to save us. I am working for reducing energy and carbon use. But reducing isn't enough anymore, I think the tipping point has been crossed, and judging by how I see politics and people behaving, we are in for a long ugly ride.
The only hope is some form of carbon/methane sequestration. Unfortunatly I don't have an answer for how that will work. The only thing I can think of is some sort of Von Neuman machines or bio engineering of algea to absorb carbon... but I don't have a clue honestly.
I am much more sure of things that won't save us, e.g. sitting on our ass and praying for God to do it, blaming liberals (or anyone else except those still blocking people from finding solutions), etc.
Um, no.
There are many good reasons why the versions vary. Why don't you try to look it up instead of babbling on about politics? Perhaps the only politics is on your side?
paranoid wierdo.
Oh, lordy. This question gets asked often by the easily-confused folks over at WUWT, and always in the context of a conspiracy of some sort. The thing is, the two charts are based on different algorithms, which is why it's far more important and useful to focus on year-to-year changes among the same method, and not differences between any two or more methods.
Since the end of September, 2011's ice has refrozen at a rate even slower than 2007's. From October 1 through November 14 in 2007, an average of 108,326 km2 of ice were regained each day; this year that average has been just 97,653 km2 per day. And now that the ice growth peak has been passed, with about half the ice extent and area there'll be at max already having formed, it'll be interesting to see how things pan out through the peak ice period (the end of February/beginning of March).
I'm sticking by my guns: there'll be at least one day that the Arctic Sea will be statistically free of ice between 2016 and 2020.
Done. Thanks for that link Xandra.
Btw, do you know that U.S, according to Joe Bastardi, has reached its peak in severe weather. ;-)
In june 2010, he wrote,
”This past winter, now this summer and this hurricane season... well, I will never get a chance at hitting such major extreme weather events in the U.S. again. I don't plan on dying anytime soon; it's just that as far as the overall pattern recognition skills I use to come up with my ideas go, they will never line up like this again.
I realize there may have been individual events that outstrip individual events of this past year: bigger hurricanes, higher record highs, lower record lows, a snowstorm that might be bigger for a place, etc. But in terms of the frequency of headline-grabbing weather, it won't happen again in my lifetime. Here I am with 35 years of experience with the weather (45-50 if you count all the schooling my dad gave me with his insight when I was younger) that has reached its peak.”
Will getting us below 300ppm Co2 in our atmosphere get us there?
Oh, I don't know that it's all that bold:
(Note that I didn't state--and never have--that ice will disappear and never come back. That's not gonna happen. But there will be a single calendar day sometime in the next nine years during which satellite Arctic Sea ice measurements reflect an area and/or extent and/or volume of 0 km2.)
It's really not that bold. It reminds me of something my teenage son did once. We were 8 stories up in a hotel overlooking a pool deck and he had one of those laser pointers and he kept shining it off and on and hide at the same time so no one could see him. Not only might this blog be here in 8-9 years, but surely Neo will change his moniker a few more times. So, when ice extent goes to its highest levels in the last 4 years this winter, he will just say wait for the summer. And when it doesn't reach new lows, as it didn't this past summer, he will just say wait until next year and so on.
You know, we can go on and on about this, but here is reality. You have no advice for anyone. The sea is not rising. It is not getting any hotter than 1998. So, no advice about global warming is needed. Here's my advice for those of you who live north of the Mason-Dixon line. Keep a nice warm sweater, scarf and gloves close by this winter. It's going to be plenty cold, maybe like 76,77, 78. And I'll be here next March to take the heat if I'm wrong.
Mikey Mann has been fighting the release of his email for years. What's he hiding? He even filed as an intervenor in a lawsuit to further delay the release. Give me a break. If he wasn't guilty of wrongdoing, why is he delaying the inevitable release of his cover-ups?
The sea is rising, of course. At least, according to oceanographers and other scientists. And the planet's getting warmer all the time. Speaking of, this map is just out today. October 2011 was overall the 8th warmest on record, while on land it was the 2nd warmest. (October's Northern Hemisphere land temps were the warmest ever). La Nina cooled Pacific SSTs, leaving October's ocean temps only the 13th warmest on record:
For the record, every single month since early 1985 has been warmer than the 20th Century average. Wouldn't you think with cooling allegedly taking place there'd be at least one month in there that wasn't true?
Using his name means you're claiming to be him.
Suppose someone were to ask you today to detail precisely what you cooked for dinner last night, complete with an ingredient list showing where each item was from and what it cost, precision cooking directions, a ten-page essay explaining why you decided to cook that particular meal, and all your prior drafts of the recipes you used containing every revision or tweak you'd made over the years and an explanation of why you made each and every change.
Now suppose someone asks you that every day for the next decade.
That's where Mann and other reputable climate scientists are now.
I'm leaning more toward him being a high school student.
This is quite revealing. Essentially, he's living in the past and prefers not to think that the future just might be different, nothwithstanding that evidence to that effect that continues to pile up.
Ahh, here we are...,See "Earth" SOL System.
3rd rock out.
ADVISE Caution as to Bipedal Inhabitant's.
Class YV1A, Humanoids,
Violent, territorial, Industrial Phase.
Early Space Faring within System.
Yep! Even John Lithgow took his entourage elsewhere. ... They are still searching for signs of intelligent life.
My real name is Josh Bastardi.
You people are living in a vacuum. Severe weather is down overall compared to the past. Temperature hasn't increased globally in over a decade. Good Lord, why don't you all get together and pray for more heat? Every prediction made by warmist "scientists" has been wrong. Every model that they conjured up has been wrong. When will you concede that this farce perpetrated on the public has no basis in fact or science? Even the IPCC has now stated that there will be little or no warming for the next thirty years. How convenient.
WASHINGTON -- An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.
The science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to Pine Island Glacier. It is the area of the ice-covered continent that concerns scientists most because of its potential to cause a rapid rise in sea level. Satellite measurements have shown this area is losing ice and surrounding glaciers are thinning, raising the possibility the ice could flow rapidly out to sea.
The multidisciplinary group of 13 scientists, led by Robert Bindschadler, emeritus glaciologist of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will depart from the McMurdo Station in Antarctica in mid-December and spend six weeks on the ice shelf. During their stay, they will use a combination of traditional tools and sophisticated new oceanographic instruments to measure the shape of the cavity underneath the ice shelf and determine how streams of warm ocean water enter it, move toward the very bottom of the glacier and melt its underbelly.
"The project aims to determine the underlying causes behind why Pine Island Glacier has begun to flow more rapidly and discharge more ice into the ocean," said Scott Borg, director of NSF's Division of Antarctic Sciences, the group that coordinates all U.S. research in Antarctica. "This could have a significant impact on global sea-level rise over the coming century."
Scientists have determined the interaction of winds, water and ice is driving ice loss from the floating glacier. Gusts of increasingly stronger westerly winds push cold surface waters away from the continent, allowing warmer waters that normally hover at depths below the continental shelf to rise. The upwelling warm waters spill over the border of the shelf and move along the sea floor, back to where the glacier rises from the bedrock and floats, causing it to melt.
The warm salty waters and fresh glacier melt water combine to make a lighter mixture that rises along the underside of the ice shelf and moves back to the open ocean, melting more ice on its way. How much more ice melts is what the team wants to find out, so it can improve projections of how the glacier will melt and contribute to sea-level rise.
In January 2008, Bindschadler was the first person to set foot on this isolated corner of Antarctica as part of initial reconnaissance for the expedition. Scientists had doubted it was even possible to reach the crevasse-ridden ice shelf. Bindschadler used satellite imagery to identify an area where helicopters could land safely to transport scientists and instrumentation to and from the ice shelf.
Robert Bindschadler, an emeritus glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, was the first person to ever walk on the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, in January 2008. Credit: NASA
"The Pine Island Glacier ice shelf continues to be the place where the action is taking place in Antarctica," Bindschadler said. "It only can be understood by making direct measurements, which is hard to do. We're doing this hard science because it has to be done. The question of how and why it is melting is even more urgent than it was when we first proposed the project over five years ago."
The team will use a hot water drill to make a hole through the ice shelf. After the drill hits the ocean, the scientists will send a camera down into the cavity to observe the underbelly of the ice shelf and analyze the seabed lying approximately 1,640 feet (500 meters) below the ice. Next the team will lower an instrument package provided by oceanographer Tim Stanton of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, Calif., into the hole. The primary instrument, called a profiler, will move up and down a cable attached to the seabed, measuring temperature, salinity and currents from approximately 10 feet (3 meters) below the ice to just above the seabed.
A second hole will support a similar instrument array fixed to a pole stuck to the underside of the ice shelf. This instrument will measure how ice and water exchange heat. The team also will insert a string of 16 temperature sensors in the lowermost ice to freeze inside and become part of the ice shelf. The sensors will measure how fast heat is transmitted upward through the ice when hot flushes of water enter the ocean cavity.
Sridhar Anandakrishnan, a geophysicist with Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa., will study the shape of the ocean cavity and the properties of the bedrock under the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf through a technique called reflective seismology, which involves generating waves of energy by detonating small explosions and banging the ice with instruments resembling sledgehammers. Measurements will be taken in about three dozen spots using helicopters to move from one place to another.
For more information and related images, please visit:
› Media Telecon page
Maria-José Viñas
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Return to Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica (2009)
Robert Bindschadler, an emeritus glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and leader of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf project, describes the challenges and frustrations of trying to do science in Antarctica, in an interview filmed in 2009.
Wrong.
Incorrect.
Not true.
Nope.
Not even close.
That was easy. Thanks for playing!
Suppose someone would ask you what the world you want us to live in looks like. Paint that picture for us.
Tell us all for the record!
You preach of change, but offer no tangable vision of such.
C'mon, you can do it :)
Tell us !
I agree. That's been my guess for a few years now.
Once again you're Joshing us.
Huh? Oh, you mean like the 20-plus handles that one banned user created for the express purpose of minusing comments for those with whom he disagrees? Because I know you're not talking about me; I've had one and only one WU handle since I registered here. You're looking at it now.
I was not talking about you, Neapolitan.
I just think its funny that whatever you say, even when you exclaim you're hunkering down with some ice cream to watch a Michael Moore interview on the tube, gets about 5 to 6 like-comment praises, no matter the subject or content.
Purely an observation of trend. Much like melting ice.
ciao...
Oh, I've done my time in the GWN. I've lived in a cabin (Montana), chopped firewood (Wyoming), and even run a bunch of sled dogs (Canada). No thanks; Florida's climate suits me just fine... ;-)
I find Michael Moore somewhat obnoxious so that wasn't the (small) part of the content that I was plussing. I admire Neo's tireless rebuttals of JB's BS. It also made me smile that for once Neo didn't exert himself any more than JB ever does.
A further note, you and some others seem to assign unwarranted significance to the "+" and "-" buttons. Rest your mouse cursor over those buttons and the actual significance will be revealed, "I like this comment." and "I dislike this comment." respectively. For me "disagree with" is NOT the same as "dislike". I just express my honest reaction, if any, and then only once. This handle is the only one I have ever had on WU and I have never participated in any plus or minus mobilization campaigns like you alluded to. Can you honestly say the foregoing three sentences are true of you too?
Wait, wait, wait...who is the denier? ;)
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