TEMPERATURE RECORDINGS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29722, 16 January 1962, Page 13

TEMPERATURE RECORDINGS

N.Z. Retains Fahrenheit

Although as from yesterday the British weather office will use the centigrade temperature scale instead of the Fahrenheit scale in its daily domestic weather reports, the New Zealand Meteorological Service is not intending to make any immediate similar change, Mr N. G. Robertson, head of the climatology section of the office, said yesterday. New Zealand would probably go over about mid-year to centigrade for international exchanges, however, he added. Since January 1, when Australia began to use the centigrade scale in its international reports. New Zealand has been the only country in this part of the world still using Fahrenheit for these.

The centigrade scale takes the freezing-point of water as its zero, and the boilingpoint of water as lOOdeg. The corresponding Fahrenheit readings are 32deg and 212

deg. “W e considered changing in our domestic weather reports, but decided it would not be easy because people are so used to thinking in Fahrenheit degrees,” sard Mr Robertson. “Most of their thermometers, moreover, are graduated in the Fahrenheit scale, and they are not going to throw them all away. Education in these matters is a slow process. For example, we changed over from inches of mercury to millibars for our pressure measurements

many years ago, but many of the public’s barometers are marked in inches and so they still think that way. “There would be the additional difficulty w'ith a change to centigrade that all our existing records are in Fahrenheit degrees.”