Gordon Manley

Gordon Valentine Manley, FRGS (3 January 1902 – 29 January 1980) was an English 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 Central England temperature (CET) series of monthly mean temperatures stretching back to 1659, which is the longest standardised instrumental record available for anywhere in the world. It provides a benchmark for proxy records of climatic change for the period covered, and is a notable example of scientific scholarship and perseverance (it took over thirty years to complete). His two papers describing the work are available online.

Gordon Manley was born at Douglas, Isle of Man. He was brought up in Blackburn, Lancashire, where he attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School. After obtaining degrees in engineering and geography, Manley joined the Meteorological Office in 1925, but resigned the following year. In the summer of 1926 he was a member of the Cambridge Expedition to East Greenland, which carried out much important research. Later that same year he began a lengthy career in academia when he became an assistant lecturer in geography at Birmingham University. His enthusiasm for his subject, his joy of learning and his wit made him an excellent teacher. In 1928 he was appointed a lecturer in geography at the University of Durham. He subsequently became a Senior Lecturer and founding Head of Department and Director of the University's Observatory.

He became Curator of Durham University Observatory in 1931, where he did much work on standardising the long temperature record that dated back to the mid-nineteenth century. The following year, he started collecting data at Moor House in the northern Pennines. He subsequently established a meteorological station close to the summit of Great Dun Fell at 847m, which recorded data at three-hour intervals from 1938 to 1940. This was the first series of mountain observations to be made in England.

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