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Air temperatures are measured at a standard height of 1.5 metres, using thermometers placed inside a ‘Stevenson screen’. This is a white painted box with an insulated floor and roof; louvered sides shade the inside from direct sunlight, but allow a gentle, free circulation of air. This particular screen is at the Radcliffe Observatory in Oxford; daily meteorological records were first started here in 1767 and a continuous record exists from January 1815, the longest series for a single site in Britain.