Climate Change: The Evidence from Central England Temperatures

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to investigate whether there is evidence to suggest that the underlying
trend of the pattern of Central England Temperature (CET) series varies over time. In addition, it is
also of particular interest in describing the structure of the data. For this paper, the data is a series
of 10-year averages of the CET series from 1663 to 2002. There is no doubt that a linear regression
trend in time with an MA (2) noise model describes the series adequately. The model suggests that
there is evidence of an overall warming trend, and generally, the temperature is estimated to rise
approximately 0.0252 C over a decade. Moreover, the estimated 95% confidence interval for the
slope is (0.01148, 0.03892).