BERKELEY, Calif., Oct. 21 (UPI) -- A study of world temperature records reaffirms conclusions by climate scientists that global warming is real, researchers in Berkeley, Calif., said.
The announcement came from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which examined 1.6 billion temperature reports from 15 data archives stretching back over 200 years, CNN reported Friday.
The analysis was undertaken to address concerns of climate skeptics about the data used in reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Critics have consistently challenged the findings of studies by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Britain's University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. Their research is used by the IPCC.
The Berkeley Earth researchers said they found "reliable evidence" of a rise in average world land temperatures of 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid-1950s.
"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the United States and the U.K.," Professor Richard A. Muller, Berkeley Earth's scientific director, said in a statement.
"This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate-change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions," Muller said.
