A new analysis by a group of scientists claims that the Earth’s surface is getting warmer.
Scientists with the Berkeley Earth Project used new methods and new data and found the same warming trend seen by groups like the U.K. Met Office and NASA.
The project received funds from sources that back organizations lobbying against action on climate change.
The group said it has also found evidence that changing sea temperatures in the north Atlantic may be a major reason for the Earth’s average temperature varying globally from year to year.
University of California physics professor Richard Muller gathered a team of 10 scientists, including the winner of this year’s Nobel Physics Prize for research Saul Perlmutter.
The groups work examined claims from “skeptical” bloggers that temperature data from weather stations did not show a true global warming trend.
The claim was that many stations have registered warming because they are located in or near cities, and those cities have been growing. This is known as the urban heat island effect.
The group found that about 40,000 weather stations around the world whose output had been recorded and stored in digital form.
The Berkley group then developed a new way of analyzing the data to plot the global temperature since 1800.
“Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK,” Muller said in a press release.
“This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.”
The group found that since the 1950s, the average temperature over land increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Berkley group says it has also found evidence that changing sea temperatures in the North Atlantic may be the reason why the Earth’s average temperature varies globally from year to year.
The team also found that the urban heat island effect does not contribute significantly to average land temperature rises as a whole because urban areas make up less than 1 percent of the Earth’s and area.
—
On the Net:
Comments