Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society - Climate Science ...

APPENDIX F
Units
Unfortunately, the units used to measure wind speed, temperature, pressure
<strong>and</strong> so forth are not st<strong>and</strong>ard within the United States or between the United
States <strong>and</strong> the rest of the world. Even scientists switch back <strong>and</strong> forth between
units. Wind speed, for example, is expressed in meters per second, kilometers
per hour, statute miles per hour, <strong>and</strong> nautical miles per hour (knots).
To assist the reader, we provide the conversion list below. In the text, we
have sought to use English units with a metric equivalent in parentheses.
While there are exceptions to this order in the text (<strong>and</strong> in the Figures), we
have adopted English units as the primary set of units because most of the
readers are expected to be most familiar with them. Also to st<strong>and</strong>ardize the
text as much as possible, we have tried to avoid knots <strong>and</strong> use statute miles
per hour (when we use "miles per hour" this means statute miles per hour).
The conversions are as follows.
WIND SPEED
1 nautical mile per hour (1 knot) = 1.15 statute miles per hour = 0.515 meters
per second
1 statute mile per hour = 0.447 meters per second
1 meter per second = 2.233 miles per hour
1 meter = 3.281 feet
1 foot = 0.3048 meters
1.609 kilometers = 1 mile
2.54 centimeters = 1 inch
DISTANCE