Central England temperature

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)[1] 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 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 in Exeter, 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.[2]

The warmest year on record was recorded in 2022, with an average temperature of 11.15 degrees Celsius. This beat the previous 2014 record by 0.2 degrees and was almost 2 degrees over the 1961-1990 average

CET and its 10-year and 30-year moving averages (orange and black traces, respectively).[3]

This stacked warming stripes graphic—technically a two-dimensional heat map—organizes CETs by month (vertically) and by year (horizontally).[4]

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 10.40 °C (50.72 °F). [5][lower-alpha 1]

Both the general warming trend[6] and the hottest year on record at the time, 2014,[7] have been attributed to human-caused climate change using observational and climate model-based techniques. This record was subsequently broken in 2022, when a mean CET of 11.15 C was recorded, 1.68 degrees above the 1961-90 average and breaking the 2014 record by nearly 0.2 Celsius.

Taking the 364-year period for the series as a whole:

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.

Daily mean temperatures have been available since 1772, with max and min data available from 1878 onward. [13]

• Climate of the United Kingdom
• England and Wales Precipitation

• G. Manley, "Central England temperatures: monthly means 1659 to 1973.", Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. 100, pp. 389–405 (1974).
• D.E. Parker, T.P. Legg and C. Folland, "A new daily Central England Temperature series 1772-1991," Int. J. Climatol., vol. 12, pp. 317–342 (1992).
• Graphs of the series at the University of East Anglia
• Freely downloadable text file containing the data.
• Met Office Hadley Centre CET pages