The Earth's surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a US scientific group set up in the wake of the "Climategate" affair has concluded.
The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa.
The project received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.
"Climategate", in 2009, involved claims global warming had been exaggerated.
Emails of University of East Anglia (UEA) climate scientists were hacked, posted online and used by critics to allege manipulation of climate change data.
Fresh start
The Berkeley group says it has also found evidence that changing sea temperatures in the north Atlantic may be a major reason why the Earth's average temperature varies globally from year to year.
The group includes physicist Saul Perlmutter, a Nobel Prize winner this year
The project was established by University of California physics professor Richard Muller, who was concerned by claims that established teams of climate researchers had not beenentirely open with their data.
He gathered a team of 10scientists, mostly physicists, including such luminaries as Saul Perlmutter, winner of this year's Nobel Physics Prize for research showing the Universe's expansion is accelerating.
Funding came from a number of sources, including charitable foundations maintained by the Koch brothers, the billionaire US industrialists, who have also donated large sums to organisations lobbying against acceptance of man-made global warming.
Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warmingvalues published previously”
Richard Muller
Berkeley group founder
"I was deeply concerned that the group [at UEA] had concealed discordantdata," Professor Muller told BBC News.
"Science is best done when the problems with the analysis are candidly shared."
The group's work also examined claims from"sceptical" bloggers that temperature data from weather stations did not show a true global warming trend.
The claim was that many stations have registered warming because they are located in or near cities, and those cities have been growing - the urban heat island effect.
The Berkeley group found about 40,000 weather stations around the world whose output has been recorded and stored in digital form.
It developed a new way of analysing the data to plot the global temperature trend over land since 1800.
What came out was a graph remarkably similarto those produced by the world's three most important and established groups, whose work had been decried as unreliable andshoddy in climate sceptic circles.
The Berkeley group's record of global land temperature mirrors existing ones closely
Two of those three records are maintained in the US, by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration(Nasa).
The third is a collaboration between the UK Met Office and UEA's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), from which the e-mails that formed the basis of the"Climategate" furore were hacked two years ago.
"Our biggest surprise wasthat the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US andthe UK," said Professor Muller.
"This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change sceptics did not seriously affect their conclusions."
Since the 1950s, the average temperature over land has increased by 1C, the group found.
They also report that although the urban heat island effect is real - which is well-established - it is not behind the warming registered by the majority of weather stations around the world.
They also showed that in the US, weather stations rated as "high quality" byNoaa showed the same warming trend as those rated as "low quality".
'Time for apology'
Professor Phil Jones, the CRU scientist who came infor the most personal criticism during"Climategate", was cautious about interpreting the Berkeleyresults because they havenot been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
"I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published," he said.
The findings so far provide validation for Phil Jones, targeted during the "Climategate" affair
"These initial findings arevery encouraging, and echo our own results andour conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal."
The Berkeley team has chosen to release the findings initially on its own website.
They are asking for comments and feedback before preparing the manuscripts for formal scientific publication.
In part, this counters the accusation made during"Climategate" that climate scientists formed a tight clique who peer-reviewed each other's papers and made sure their own global warming narrative was the only one making it into print.
But for Richard Muller, this free circulation also marks a return to how science should be done.
"That is the way I practised science for decades; it was the way everyone practised it until some magazines - particularly Science and Nature - forbade it," he said.
"That was not a good change, and still many fields such as string theory practice the traditional method wholeheartedly."
This open "wiki" method of review is regularly employed in physics, the home field for seven of the 10 Berkeley team.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director for the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London, said the warming of the Earth's surface was unequivocal.
"So-called 'sceptics' should now drop their thoroughly discredited claims that the increase in global average temperature could be attributed to the impact of growing cities," he said.
"More broadly, this study also proves once again how false it was for 'sceptics' to allege that the e-mails hacked from UEA proved that the CRU land temperature record had been doctored.
"It is now time for an apology from all those, including US presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who have made false claims that the evidence for global warming has beenfaked by climate scientists."
Ocean currents
The Berkeley group does depart from the"orthodox" picture of climate science in its depiction of short-term variability in the global temperature.
The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is generally thought to be the main reason for inter-annual warming or cooling.
But by the Berkeley team's analysis, the global temperature correlates more closely with the state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index - ameasure of sea surface temperature in the north Atlantic.
There are theories suggesting that the AMO index is in turn driven by fluctuations in the north Atlantic current commonly called the Gulf Stream.
The team suggests it is worth investigating whether the long-term AMO cycles, which are thought to last 65-70 years, may play a part in the temperature rise, fall and rise again seen during the 20th Century.
But they emphasise that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) driven bygreenhouse gas emissions is very much in their picture.
"Had we found no global warming, then that would have ruled out AGW," said Professor Muller.
"Had we found half as much, it would have suggested that prior estimates [of AGW] were too large; if we had found more warming, it would have raised the question of whether prior estimates were too low.
"But we didn't; we foundthat the prior rise was confirmed. That means that we do not directly affect prior estimates."
The team next plans to look at ocean temperatures, in order toconstruct a truly global dataset.

When will people realise that regardless of the cause, global warming IS occuring? Our way of life as we know it, whether in the West or developing countries is facing a grave threat.
Is it not time that we put aside the arguments and concentrate on limiting the damage? We burn billions of tonnes each year - how can that NOT have an effect?

Why not wait till after this winter to decide if it is 'warming'?

Climate change I will agree with.

That it is manmade I will not.

That man could have triggered it? (perhaps in some parts of it).

However what is happening upon the Earth now is far more complicated than 'global warming'.

so, even if it is, what is anyone going to do about it?

Build storm proof homes.

Lay in emergency supplies.

Work, laugh, live and play.

Teach our children.

Hunker down when a storm hits.

Rebuild after.

Wait for the next storm.

Ride it out.

Eventually the system will reach its new equilibrium.

Wanna' slow down global warming?

Pass out more Trojans.

I agree. Saying it is warmer now than 200 years ago does not mean we have man made global warming. Yet we do have evidence that the Earth has cycles of temperature and has its own highs and lows. We just didn't have the technology to tract them for most of human civilization.

Polution (and the fines they charge these corporations that cause it, is ludicrous) is a problem, not global warming! It's the only way they can blame it on the people is blame it on "global warming", then they can impose a tax on US instead of calling it polution and blaming the corporations!

Corporations with belching smoke stacks, chemical pools, and run-offs, dump there toxic and biological waste into our fresh water, our oceans, landfills, or where ever. They get paid MILLIONS of $$$ to dispose of it correctly. Even if they are caught dumping, they are fined only a few thousand $$$....WHOOPIE.... so what is the incentive for them to stop?

Easier to blame these bad conditions/situations on global warming and penilize the sheeple....as they do....and get away with it!

YOUR TAX DOLLARS FOR REPRESENTATION AT WORK!