CET 1659 - 2014 using Hadley Centre Data

The Central England Temperature (CET) record is a

meteorological Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not ...

dataset A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more database tables, where every column of a table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given record of the d ...

originally published by Professor

Gordon Manley Gordon Valentine Manley, FRGS (3 January 1902 – 29 January 1980) was a British climatologist who has been described as "probably the best known, most prolific and most expert on the climate of Britain of his generation". He assembled the Cent ...

in 1953 and subsequently extended and updated in 1974, following many decades of painstaking work. The monthly

mean There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value ( magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ari ...

surface air

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied on ...

s, for the

Midlands The Midlands (also referred to as Central England) are a part of England that broadly correspond to the Mercia, Kingdom of Mercia of the Early Middle Ages, bordered by Wales, Northern England and Southern England. The Midlands were important in ...

region of England, are given (in degrees Celsius) from the year 1659 to the present. This record represents the longest series of monthly temperature observations in existence. It is a valuable dataset for

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists in research, while th ...

s and

climate scientists This list of climate scientists contains famous or otherwise notable persons who have contributed to the study of climate science. The list is compiled manually, so will not be complete, up to date, or comprehensive. See also :Climatologists. ...

. It is monthly from 1659, and a daily version has been produced from 1772. The monthly means from November 1722 onwards are given to a precision of 0.1 °C. The earliest years of the series, from 1659 to October 1722 inclusive, for the most part only have monthly means given to the nearest degree or half a degree, though there is a small 'window' of 0.1 degree precision from 1699 to 1706 inclusive. This reflects the number, accuracy, reliability and geographical spread of the temperature records that were available for the years in question.

Data quality

Although best efforts have been made by Manley and subsequent researchers to quality control the series, there are data problems in the early years, with some non-instrumental data used. These problems account for the lower precision to which the early monthly means were quoted by Manley. Parker et al. (1992) addressed this by not using data prior to 1772, since their daily series required more accurate data than did the original series of monthly means. Before 1722, instrumental records do not overlap and Manley used a non-instrumental series from

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Nethe ...

compiled by Labrijn (1945), to make the monthly central England temperature (CET) series complete. For a period early in the 21st century there were two versions of the series: the "official" version maintained by the

Hadley Centre The Met Office Hadley Centre — named in honour of George Hadley — is one of the United Kingdom's leading centres for the study of scientific issues associated with climate change. It is part of, and based at the headquarters of the Met Of ...

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal c ...

, and a version that was maintained by the late Philip Eden which he argued was more consistent with the series as originally compiled by Manley.

Trends revealed by the series

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a cool period which coincided with cool winters and generally cool summers, the temperatures fluctuated widely but with little trend. From 1910, temperatures increased until about 1950, when they flattened before a sharp rising trend began in about 1975. The warmest decade on record is the 2010s (2011–2020) with a mean temperature of . Both the general warming trend and the hottest year on record, 2014, have been attributed to human-caused

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

using observational and climate model-based techniques. This is remarkable given the small region of the world that the CET series represents which results in high variability relative to a temperature series that represents a much larger area, such as the global mean surface temperature.

Extremes

Taking the 359-year period for the series as a whole:

Hottest

Coldest

Mean, maximum and minimum temperatures

Since 1878, the Central England temperature has recorded daily maximum and minimum temperatures; its daily mean records began in 1772. The tables below show the record average max/min for each season and each calendar month since 1878.

Highest minimum

Lowest minimum

Highest maximum

Lowest maximum

Daily records

Daily mean temperatures have been available since 1772, with max and min data available from 1878 onward.

Data quality

Trends revealed by the series

Extremes

Hottest

Coldest

Mean, maximum and minimum temperatures

Highest minimum

Lowest minimum

Highest maximum

Lowest maximum

Daily records

Highest mean

Highest minimum

Highest maximum

Lowest mean

Lowest minimum

Lowest maximum

See also

Notes

References

Further reading