It’s official: the world is getting warmer. The independent Berkeley Earth Project has concluded average global land temperature has risen by around 1˚C since the mid-1950s after assessing around a billion temperature records, some dating back to the 1800s. The figure tallies with studies by Nasa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), and the Met Office’s Hadley Centre at the University of East Anglia and seems to present an unassailable case. However, the study’s authors have faced criticism for going public with their results on the web before the research has been peer reviewed. The team, which includes Saul Perlmutter, joint winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, created a huge open database of climate readings to produce a transparent assessment.

Researchers have now submitted four papers to academic journal Geophysical Research Letters covering their work to date. As well as the 1˚C figure, the researchers also rejected claims from critics that previous studies have been skewed by urban heat islands, poor quality data stations, and even unethical researchers, as has been alleged by some climate sceptics in the wake of the 2009 ‘Climategate’ furore. While acknowledging that cities tend to be warmer than surrounding rural areas, the study concluded heat islands do not affect overall land temperature as they make up less than one per cent of the earth’s surface area. Moreover, the team concluded that stations rated as ‘poor quality’ showed the same warming trend as their ‘high quality’ counterparts.
(Source: www.environmental-expert.com )