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Rosy outlook for British gardening as growing season becomes longer

Xinhua, March 24, 2016 Adjust font size:

Six of the 10 longest growing seasons in Britain have occurred within the last 30 years, figures from the Met Office revealed on Wednesday which is the World Meteorological Day.

The Met Office uses the Central England Temperature (CET) record, the longest continuous temperature record in the world, with monthly temperature figures going back to 1659 and a daily series back to 1772.

It allows weather experts to look at the length of the growing season in Britain over several centuries.

The Met Office records the length of the growing season as part of a set of British climate statistics based on temperature. According to latest CET figures, during the last 10 years the "plant" growing season, has on average been 29 days longer than the period between 1961 and 1990.

Dr. Mark McCarthy, manager of the Met Office's National Climate Information Center, said: "The CET record is an invaluable data set for measuring long-term changes in the climate. Between 1861 and 1890, the average growing season was 244 days, and measuring the same period a century later, the average growing season had extended by just over a week."

"Between 2006 and 2015, the average growing season has been 29 days longer at 280 days when compared with the period between 1961 and 1990," the manager said

The figures reveal that six of the 10 longest growing seasons in the CET record sequence have occurred in the last 30 years. At 336 days, the longest growing season in the sequence was in 2014: tenth in the sequence was 2015 with 303 growing days. Endit