User:Tillman/Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project is an effort to resolve criticism of the current records of the Earth's surface temperatures by preparing an open database and analysis of these temperatures and temperature trends, to be available online, with all calculations, methods and results also to be freely available online. BEST's stated aim is a "transparent approach, based on data analysis." "Our results will include not only our best estimate for the global temperature change, but estimates of the uncertainties in the record."

"We are bringing the spirit of science back to a subject that has become too argumentative and too contentious," BEST founder Richard A. Muller told The Guardian. "We are an independent, non-political, non-partisan group. We will gather the data, do the analysis, present the results and make all of it available. There will be no spin, whatever we find. We are doing this because it is the most important project in the world today. Nothing else comes close."

Lead scientist Robert Rohde has assembled a preliminary temperature database by combining 1.6 billion temperature reports from 10 preexisting data archives (4 daily and 6 monthly). The records are in 14 different formats and they overlap, but not completely. Muller likens Rohde's achievement to Hercules cleaning the Augean stables.

Muller and BEST adviser Judith Curry are both seen as climate skeptics by many in the climate science world. Climate-change activist Joe Romm has strongly criticized the BEST project in Grist magazine and in his Center for American Progress blog.

The BEST project is funded by unrestricted educational grants totaling (as of March 2011) about $635,000. Large donors include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Charles G. Koch Foundation, a Bill Gates climate fund , and the  William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation. The donors have no control over how BEST conducts the research or what they publish.

Scientific team

 * Robert Rohde, lead scientist. Ph.D. in physics, University of California, Berkeley (UCB). Rohde's scientific interests include earth sciences, climatology, and scientific graphics. Rohde is the founder of Global Warming Art, and a long-term contributor to Wikipedia.
 * Richard A. Muller, Chair and project founder. Professor of Physics, UCB and Senior Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Muller is a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group. His recent research interests have included the Ice Ages, the Nemesis hypothesis, and, most recently, recalculating the Earth's surface temperature record.
 * David Brillinger, Professor of Statistics, UCB. A contributor to the theory of time series analysis, Brillinger is a veteran collaborator with researchers from other fields.
 * Judith Curry, Climatologist and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
 * Robert Jacobsen, Professor of Physics at UCB and an expert in analyses of large data sets.
 * Saul Perlmutter, astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Professor of Physics, UCB.
 * Arthur H. Rosenfeld, former California Energy Commissioner. Research he directed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory led to the development of compact fluorescent lamps.

Other team members include:
 * Don Groom, Senior Physicist at the LBNL Physics Division
 * Elizabeth Muller, Project Manager (and Richard Muller's daughter )
 * Charlotte Wickham, a PhD student in the Department of Statistics, UCB.
 * Jonathan Wurtele, Professor of Physics, UCB and Senior Scientist, LBNL

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