Our ongoing research includes the study of climate variability, extreme events, and the role of the oceans.

A 2 page summary of our results to date, aimed primarily at the media, is available by clicking here.

More technical results, meant primarily for scientists, are presented below.

Global land temperatures have increased by 1.5 degrees C over the past 250 years

Berkeley Earth has just released analysis of land-surface temperature records going back 250 years, about 100 years further than previous studies. The analysis shows that the rise in average world land temperature globe is approximately 1.5 degrees C in the past 250 years, and about 0.9 degrees in the past 50 years.

Land temperature with 1- and 10-year running averages. The shaded regions are the one- and two-standard deviation uncertainties calculated including both statistical and spatial sampling errors. Prior land results from the other groups are also plotted. The NASA GISS record had a land mask applied; the HadCRU curve is the simple land average, not the hemispheric-weighted one.

Human Effect

The annual and decadal land surface temperature from the BerkeleyEarth average, compared to a linear combination of volcanic sulfate emissions and the natural logarithm of CO2. It is observed that the large negative excursions in the early temperature records are likely to be explained by exceptional volcanic activity at this time. Similarly, the upward trend is likely to be an indication of anthropogenic changes. The grey area is the 95% confidence interval.

Video

Learn more

1. A New Estimate of the Average Earth Surface Land Temperature Spanning 1753 to 2011
2. Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process (commonly referred to as the “Methods” paper) and its appendix
3. Influence of Urban Heating on the Global Temperature Land Average

1. Earth Atmospheric Land Surface Temperature and Station Quality in the United States
2. Decadal Variations in the Global Atmospheric Land Temperatures