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[Tylui]

Just curious- Is there a specific reason why there are two different temperature scales?

[Toady One]

The world gen one came first (well before the game was released), and later when I added temperature for local objects, I decided I needed more resolution.  I didn't bother changing the original scale, and I think there might be some irritations with world map fields being signed 2 byte vars and local temperatures being unsigned 2 byte vars that I'd have to quibble with.

[Puzzlemaker]

If you ever change it... if possible, can you make it use Celsius?

Just 'cause... it's easier.  For everyone.

Zero is freezing, 100 is boiling.  Easy-peasy.

[Earthquake Damage]

1.  Fahrenheit has greater resolution than Celsius when you're using integers.

2.  Toady lives in (and likely grew up in, though don't quote me on that) the States.  Here in the US, we typically use Fahrenheit outside of scientific/engineering contexts.  It may have seemed more natural to use Fahrenheit.

[Qmarx]

3. The 0 to 100 scale in Fahrenheit was originally calibrated for the freezing point of seawater and human body temperature (long story short - dude's wife had a fever).  These temperatures are arguably more useful for world calibration than the boiling/triple point of pure water, as oceans are salty...

[Raumkraut]

Kelvin.
Want more resolution? MilliKelvin.

Or, as this is Dwarf Fortress, there could be an entirely new scale based on the melting points of various rocks.

Why confuse only most of the world, when you could confuse all of it.

[Earthquake Damage]

Kelvin is Celsius with a different zero point.

"MilliKelvin" (never heard temperature with metric prefixes before...  odd) is too small a scale.  Without increasing the number of bytes used to define temperature, it would severely restrict the range of valid temperatures.  You would have impossibly cool magma, for example.

[Qmarx]

Plus, no way to have colder-than-absolute-zero creatures.

Not that that'll be needed, once proper thermal conductivity and heat capacity variables are introduced. 

[SHAD0Wdump]

So basically you stepped into a land equivalent to deep space.

[Earthquake Damage]

Actually, I think one of the reasons Toady zeroed his temperature scale where he did was so he could have things colder than absolute zero to accommodate magical cold.