A Comparison of the Temperature Records of Edinburgh and Central England

The effect of spring temperature on the appearance dates of British butterflies 1883–1993

“…In the 187O's, as an extension of its network of amateur weather recorders, the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS) established a phenological network and thereafter published an annual phenologica] report, coordinating observations from around the Bntish Isles (including what is now Eire) From 1883, observations on the first appearance of three butterflies, the small white Pierts rapae (L), orange tip Anthocharis cardamtnes (L ) and meadow brown Mamola jurtina (L ) were published These species could be easily identified although the small white records may have included some female green-veined white Pieris napi (L ) records (Clarke et al 1927) The number of English and Welsh records for these species ranged from seven, when the butterfly fauna were first included m the phenological report, to 227 when the activity was at its peak of populanty in the early 193O's From 1937193O's From -1947, following a pap>er on their phenology (Gunton 1935), a greater emphasis was given in the report to Lepidoptera The report then included an additional 9 species of butterflies (small copper Lycaena phlaeas (L ), holly blue Celastrina argwlus (L), small heath Coenonympha pamphilus (L ), common blue Polyommatus tcarus (Rott), large skipper Ochlodes venata (Brem and Grey), small tortoiseshell Aglais urticae (L), peacock Inachis to (L), pamted lady Cynthia cardui (L ) and red admiral Vanessa atalanta (L)) The 1947 phenological report was the last published Because of the sparsity of data from Ireland and from Scotland we summarised only the records for England and Wales For each year and for each species the mean first appearance date (converted to day number after December 31), standard deviation of the first appearance date and the number of records were calculated Isolated, obviously questionable dates (for example mid-February observations of the small white) have been excluded when calculating these summary statistics. We also extracted the flowenng records for "garhc hedge mustard" (Alliarm petwlata (Cavara and Grande)) and the few records of lady's smock Cardamme pratensts (L), for companson with the orange tip, whose larval stages feed on seed heads of both plants site observations are taken at least weekly from April until September each year We have abstracted information on the 12 species, for which QJRMS records existed, for the years 1976 until 1993 England and Wales summary statistics for each species and for each year were calculated as for the QJRMS data We also calculated a crude measure of the mean flight date (the average record date, weighted by the abundance on each date) for companson with the mean first appearance date Temperature data Manley (1974) published central England monthly mean air temperatures for each year from 1659 to 1973, which was later extended to 1991 by Parker et al (1992) Because of our use of mean England and Wales appearance dates this represents a vahd choice of temperature data with which to make compansons Manley's data also correlate well with data from other parts of the UK (Duncan 1991) and have been used successfully for other phenological analysis (Sparks and Carey 1995) At the time of wnting, equivalent data were not available to compare the 1992 and 1993 BMS data…”

Phenology of British butterflies and climate change

“…(1992) and is now regularly updated by the Meterological Office Hadley Centre ( http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/mikeh/ datasets/uk/cet.htm). Data from the CET series have been shown to be broadly representative of temperature in other parts of the UK ( Duncan 1991).…”

Central England temperatures: long‐term variability and teleconnections

“…Such connections may serve to explain the physical mechanisms underlying features in the record, such as the prominent oscillations; they may prove useful when applied to agriculture or meteorology, for example; or they may simply demonstrate that geophysical records do not exist in a vacuum. Burroughs (1985) found a relationship between the CET record and French wine harvest dates, and Duncan (1991) compared the CET record to a similar time series of temperature data from Edinburgh, Scotland.…”