learning Old temperature scales

[cheeky_monkey]

i have just been thumbing through old met office reports from around the time of the first world war..and notice they did not use the Fahrenheit or Celsius scale for measure temperature but something with an acronym of A for example it states the temperature reached 273.2 A in Camden on such and such a date or the month was 4.5 A above normal.

does anyone know what scale this is? i had a look at the various temperature scales on google but it doesn't seem to match any given on there  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_of_temperature

[knocker]

53 minutes ago, cheeky_monkey said:

i have just been thumbing through old met office reports from around the time of the first world war..and notice they did not use the Fahrenheit or Celsius scale for measure temperature but something with an acronym of A for example it states the temperature reached 273.2 A in Camden on such and such a date or the month was 4.5 A above normal.

does anyone know what scale this is? i had a look at the various temperature scales on google but it doesn't seem to match any given on there  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_of_temperature

Are we sure the A is not just meaning absolute thus Kelvin cm?

[cheeky_monkey]

1 minute ago, knocker said:

Are we sure the A is not just meaning absolute thus Kelvin cm?

here is an example

jun1917.pdf

[knocker]

4 minutes ago, cheeky_monkey said:

here is an example

jun1917.pdf

I'll stick with my first answer

[cheeky_monkey]

seems a bit strange that the met office dropped the Fahrenheit scale for a number of years?

[mike57]

Just been doing a bit of digging around in the old reports, quite interesting:

December 1913 - Everything is Imperial, Barometer in Inches, wind speed in mph, rain in Inches, temperature in degF

January 1914 - Barometer mbar, wind speed m/s, rain inches, temps degF

Feb 1915 - Rainfalls are now mm, Snow is in cm

Jul 1915 - Hailstones in Inches, rain still in mm

Jan 1916 solves your problem, as temps are given in both scales, and it is clear that degA = C

 

 

[mike57]

13 minutes ago, mike57 said:

Just been doing a bit of digging around in the old reports, quite interesting:

December 1913 - Everything is Imperial, Barometer in Inches, wind speed in mph, rain in Inches, temperature in degF

January 1914 - Barometer mbar, wind speed m/s, rain inches, temps degF

Feb 1915 - Rainfalls are now mm, Snow is in cm

Jul 1915 - Hailstones in Inches, rain still in mm

Jan 1916 solves your problem, as temps are given in both scales, and it is clear that degA = C

 

 

 

If you look at Dec 1920 it even gives you a little conversion chart

By December 1922 temps had gone back to F, and winds to mph but rainfall is still mm and in Feb 1923 snowfall is in inches but rainfall is in mm

I didnt realise that Metoffice had experimented with metric values that early, as a child in the early 1960's all reports were inches/degF although changes to Celcius in the early 60's I think

[mike57]

And for anyone that wants to look at all the report here is the link http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/library/archive-hidden-treasures/monthly-weather-report

[cheeky_monkey]

be interesting as to why they started using the Kelvin temperature scale only to drop it again after a few years??

[mike Meehan]

On ‎17‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 20:32, mike57 said:

 

If you look at Dec 1920 it even gives you a little conversion chart

By December 1922 temps had gone back to F, and winds to mph but rainfall is still mm and in Feb 1923 snowfall is in inches but rainfall is in mm

I didnt realise that Metoffice had experimented with metric values that early, as a child in the early 1960's all reports were inches/degF although changes to Celcius in the early 60's I think

From 1960 to 1963 I was a scientific assistant in the Met Office - we were plotting in C and most of the world was sending their obs in C, however the Americans still insisted on F, meaning we had to convert all their temps into C. After a while that became automatic, I still remember a lot of them.

As a matter of interest do the Americans still send obs in F?  looking at some their forecasts for their own public, they are still in F.