I grew up with Celsius. I was aware of Fahrenheit as the scale the news used when there was a heatwave, but a world running roughly from -10°C to +39°C felt perfectly natural.
Then I married an American woman and suddenly Fahrenheit was the only temperature scale. The “double it and add thirty” rule became second nature after a while, along with useful mnemonics such as observing that sixteen equals sixty.
But I must acknowledge something Fahrenheit does well, it was optimised for humans living on Earth.
I think we can do one better.
🌡️ The Godfrey Scale (°G)
The design principles are refreshingly simple:
- 0°G is as cold as it gets.
- 9°G is as hot as it gets.
- One digit should cover almost every weather forecast you will ever encounter where people actually live.
- If that’s not enough precision, you could add another digit after the decimal point, but really, you won’t.
- If you need a temperature below 0°G or above 9°G, you are either conducting science, exploring Antarctica, or making poor life choices. Somewhere around 12°G, the mercury starts reconsidering its career.
| °G | Approx °C | What it actually means |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | -20°C | Properly cold. Stay indoors if possible. |
| 1 | -13°C | Bitter winter weather. |
| 2 | -7°C | Freezing all day. |
| 3 | 0°C | Frost, ice, frozen windscreens. |
| 4 | 7°C | Coat weather. |
| 5 | 13°C | Pleasantly cool. |
| 6 | 20°C | Comfortable. The ideal human temperature. |
| 7 | 27°C | Warm. Shorts become socially acceptable. |
| 8 | 33°C | Hot. Seek shade and cold drinks. |
| 9 | 40°C | Extremely hot. Air conditioning earns its keep. |
This gives us ten meaningful bands corresponding not to laboratory measurements but to human experience.
Sharp-eyed readers may notice that each step of the Godfrey Scale is exactly 12°F, and 0°G lands on -4°F. Yes, it’s Fahrenheit, plus four, divided by twelve. Fahrenheit had the right idea all along but he used too many digits. As a bonus, 6°G is exactly 68°F, a perfectly respectable American room temperature.
🥵 Feeling eight eight eight…
A weather forecast becomes wonderfully concise.
Daventry tomorrow: a high of 6, falling to 4 overnight.
No units required. No conversion charts. No arguments with Americans.
A 6 is comfortable. A 3 means scrape the car. An 8 means complain loudly. Everybody instantly understands.
Scientists will continue using Kelvin and engineers will continue using Celsius. The rest of us can simply ask:
“What’s it like outside?”
And receive the perfectly adequate answer…
“About a six.”
Which, when you think about it, is all most people wanted to know in the first place.
Credits
📸 “Cold Squirrel” by Ian Dick. (CC BY 2.0)
📸 “Ellie cat in her sunbeam on the couch” by Jules Perry. (Public Domain Mark 1.0)
🤖 Microsoft Copilot, co-inventor of the Godfrey Scale.
