Berkeley Earth, a leading provider of open-access, high-resolution climate data, is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with Othersphere, a spatial economics platform focused on sustainable infrastructure siting, investment, and design. This collaboration integrates the newly released Berkeley Earth High-Resolution Surface Temperature Dataset (BEST-HR) into Othersphere’s predictive modeling tools, enabling more accurate modeling of project design and long-term asset performance.
At 0.25° of spatial resolution with global coverage dating back to 1850, Berkeley Earth’s temperature data set provides an invaluable input for Othersphere’s infrastructure models, providing context for operations planning and asset risk for infrastructure investors, developers, and operators.
Data-Informed Infrastructure Strategy
Othersphere has already begun using BEST-HR to enhance insights across its Explorer platform.
For example, data center energy and cooling requirements are generally reduced in cool-to-temperate regions. But analysis conducted by Othersphere using Berkeley Earth’s dataset reveals a consistent warming trend across virtually every existing data center location since 1980. This warming is not just an academic observation—it has operational and capital planning consequences.
This time series, based on Berkeley Earth high-resolution temperature data, shows warming across all data center sites over the past four decades. The gold line represents the global average change; the red and teal lines represent the largest and smallest changes, respectively, among current data center locations. Rising ambient temperatures increase cooling loads and reduce system efficiency—highlighting the need to integrate climate trajectory data into long-term infrastructure planning.
Not all data centers respond to climate exposure in the same way. General compute infrastructure—sensitive to latency—remains tied to urban and suburban areas, while AI training clusters and crypto mining operations may have greater flexibility to explore colder, remote regions where thermal advantages and stranded energy resources offer new siting opportunities. By combining Berkeley Earth’s long-term climate baselines with geospatial data on energy, infrastructure, land use, fiber, and beyond, Othersphere is enabling a more nuanced and effective approach to development of high-performance infrastructure.
“Berkeley Earth’s data is a valuable aspect of how we enable our users to assess performance of existing or new build data centers,” said Robert Murphy, CEO of Othersphere. “It has improved the depth of our asset economics and emissions models, and gives users the ability to specifically target locations with particular climate profiles.”
Advancing Predictive Modeling with Open Data
For Berkeley Earth the partnership marks a key milestone in demonstrating the applied value of its science in operational settings.
“We developed this dataset to support practical climate applications and inform decision-making on local and regional scales across sectors,” said Kristen Sissener, Executive Director of Berkeley Earth. “Othersphere is a clear example of what’s possible when open climate science is integrated into next-generation planning tools, turning historical climate data into actionable risk models that guide capital planning and infrastructure deployment under changing climate conditions”
This collaboration underscores a growing shift in infrastructure strategy, from reactive adaptation to proactive, predictive planning. As climate risk becomes embedded in investment and design decisions, access to rigorous, accessible, and high-resolution data is becoming foundational.
By combining observational climate records with predictive analytics, Berkeley Earth and Othersphere are enabling more accurate evaluation of location-specific environmental stressors that affect long-term investment decisions and infrastructure planning.
About Berkeley Earth
Berkeley Earth is an independent, non-profit research organization that provides open, high-quality climate data products to scientists, policymakers, and the public. Its datasets are used globally to assess climate trends, inform policy, and guide investment in climate resilience. More information about Berkeley Earth’s High-Resolution Surface Temperature Data Set (BEST-HR) can be found here.
About Othersphere
Othersphere accelerates deployment of high performance, sustainable industrial infrastructure. Its search engine for sustainable infrastructure is driven by vast amounts of consolidated global data, and billions of bottom-up project models, across millions of individual locations. Spun out from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, Othersphere enables infrastructure stakeholders such as project developers, OEMs, financiers, and operators to reduce costs, accelerate action, and improve asset performance.
