Leap second

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A leap second is an intercalary, one-second adjustment that keeps broadcast standards for time of day close to mean solar time. Broadcast standards for civil time are based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), a time standard which is maintained using extremely precise atomic clocks. To keep the UTC broadcast standard close to mean solar time, UTC is occasionally corrected by an intercalary adjustment, or "leap", of one second. Over long time periods, leap seconds must be added at an ever increasing rate (see ΔT). The timing of leap seconds is determined by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS).

When a positive leap second is added at 23:59:60 UTC, it delays the start of the following UTC day (at 00:00:00 UTC) by one second, effectively slowing the UTC clock.

Leap seconds to date
Year 30 June 31 December
1972 +1 second +1 second
1973
thru
1979		 none +1 second
each year
1980 none none
1981 +1 second none
1982 +1 second none
1983 +1 second none
1984 none none
1985 +1 second none
1986 none none
1987 none +1 second
1988 none none
1989 none +1 second
1990 none +1 second
1991 none none
1992 +1 second none
1993 +1 second none
1994 +1 second none
1995 none +1 second
1996 none none
1997 +1 second none
1998 none +1 second
1999
thru
2004		 none none
2005 none +1 second
2006 none none
2007 none none
2008 none none
Year 30 June 31 December

Contents

[edit] Reason for leap seconds

Leap seconds are necessary because time is measured using stable atomic clocks (TAI or International Atomic Time), whereas the rotation of Earth slows down continually, though at a slightly variable rate. Originally, the second was defined as 1/86400 of a mean solar day (see solar time). This was determined by the rotation of the Earth around its axis and its orbit around the Sun; time was measured by astronomical observations. But the solar day becomes 1.7 ms longer every century due mainly to tidal friction (2.3 ms/cy, reduced by 0.6 ms/cy due to glacial rebound).[1]

The SI second counted by atomic time standards is now defined so that it matches the nominal second of 1/86400 of a mean solar day between 1750 and 1892. Time as measured by Earth's rotation has accumulated a delay with respect to atomic time standards. From 1961 to 1971, the rate of atomic clocks was constantly slowed to stay in sync with Earth's rotation. (Before 1961, broadcast time was synchronized to astronomically determined Greenwich Mean Time.) Since 1972, broadcast seconds have been exactly equal to SI seconds chosen in 1967 as a certain number of atomic vibrations.

UTC is counted by atomic clocks, but is kept approximately in sync with UT1 (mean solar time) by introducing a leap second when necessary. This happens when the difference (UT1−UTC) approaches 0.9 seconds, and is typically scheduled either at the end of 30 June or 31 December (though leap seconds can be applied at the end of any month). On January 1, 1972, the initial offset of UTC from TAI was chosen to be 10 seconds, which approximated the total difference which had accumulated since 1958, when TAI was defined equal to UT1 (GMT). The table shows the number of leap seconds added since then. The total difference between TAI and UTC is 10 seconds more than the total number of leap seconds.

Graph showing the difference between UT1 and UTC. Vertical segments correspond to leap seconds.
Graph showing the difference between UT1 and UTC. Vertical segments correspond to leap seconds.

The leap second adjustment (which is approximately 0.6 seconds per year) should not be confused with the difference between the length of the mean solar day and the SI day. This confuses velocity with travelled distance (in time). The reason for leap seconds is not the difference but the sum of the difference between the SI day and the mean solar day (currently about 0.002 seconds) over a given period of time. The actual rotational period varies due to unpredictable factors such as the motion of mass within Earth, and has to be observed rather than computed.

For example, suppose an atomic clock is used to count seconds from the Unix epoch of 00:00:00 on January 1, 1970. UTC and mean solar time (UT1) were almost identical at that time. After Earth makes one full rotation with respect to the mean Sun, the counter will register 86400.002 seconds (once again, the precise value will vary). Based on the counter, and assuming that a day is 24×60×60=86400 seconds long, the date will be calculated as 00:00:00.002 January 2, 1970. After 500 rotations, it will be 00:00:00 May 16, 1971 in solar time (UT1), but the counter will register 43,200,001 atomic seconds. Since 86400 × 500 is 43,200,000 seconds, the date will be calculated as 00:00:01 on May 16, 1971, as measured by atomic time. If a leap second had been added on December 31, 1970, then the date would be computed as 00:00:00 on May 16, 1971. The system involving leap seconds was set up to allow TAI and UT1 to have an offset of 0 seconds on January 1, 1958.

Tidal braking slows down Earth's rotation, causing the number of SI seconds in a mean solar day to increase from approximately 86400.002 to 86400.004 over 100 years. For unknown reasons, Earth sped up after year 2000, so the mean solar day has become 1 ms shorter and fewer leap seconds have been needed after year 2000.[citation needed]

[edit] Announcement of leap seconds

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) announces the insertion of a leap second whenever the difference between UTC and UT1 approaches 0.6 s, to keep the difference between UTC and UT1 from exceeding ±0.9 s. The announcement appears in IERS "Bulletin C", typically published every six months.

After UTC 23:59:59, a positive leap second at 23:59:60 would be counted, before the clock indicates 00:00:00 of the next day. Negative leap seconds are also possible, should the Earth's rotation become slightly faster; in that case, 23:59:58 would be followed by 00:00:00. Leap seconds occur only at the end of a UTC month, and have only ever been inserted at the end of June 30 or December 31. Unlike leap days, they occur simultaneously worldwide; for example, the leap second on 31 December 2005 occurred at 23:59:60 UTC. This was 6:59:60 p.m. U.S. Eastern Standard Time and 0:59:60 a.m. on 1 January 2006 Central European Time.

Historically, leap seconds have been inserted about every 18 months. However, because the Earth's rotation rate is unpredictable in the long term, it is not possible to predict the need for them more than six months in advance. Between January 1972 and December 2005, the IERS gave instructions to insert a leap second on 23 occasions. The interval between 1999-01-01 and 2005-12-31 was the longest period without a leap second since the system was introduced.

Leap seconds are also not included directly in GPS time, although a regularly broadcast message notes how far GPST and UTC are apart.

Some time signal broadcasts give voice announcements of the impending leap-second.

[edit] Proposal to redefine UTC and abolish leap seconds

On July 5, 2005, the Head of the Earth Orientation Center of the IERS sent a notice to IERS Bulletins C and D subscribers, soliciting comments on a U.S. proposal before the ITU-R Study Group 7's WP7-A to eliminate leap seconds from the UTC broadcast standard before 2008. (The ITU-R is responsible for the definition of UTC). The Wall Street Journal noted that the proposal was considered by a U.S. official to be a "private matter internal to the ITU", as of July 2005. It was expected to be considered in November 2005, but the discussion has since been postponed.[2] Under the proposal, leap seconds would be technically replaced by leap hours as an attempt to satisfy the legal requirements of several ITU-R member nations that civil time be astronomically tied to the Sun.

A number of objections to the proposal have been raised. Dr. P. Kenneth Seidelmann, editor of the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac, wrote a letter[3] lamenting the lack of consistent public information about the proposal and adequate justification. Steve Allen of the University of California, Santa Cruz cited the large impact on astronomers in a Science News article.[4] He has an extensive online site[5] devoted to the issues and the history of leap seconds, including a set of references about the U.S. proposal and arguments against it.[6]

Arguments against the U.S. proposal include:

  • Little justification for changing UTC has been presented.
  • No serious analysis of the costs of the change (or not making a change) has been attempted.
  • The meaning of the term UTC in existing documents (technical and legal) and existing software will become ambiguous. All references to UTC will have to be reviewed to ascertain whether the original intent was to be mean solar time or to be atomic time or simply to be the conventional civil time scale which happens to be in current use.
  • All reported surveys inquiring about a change to UTC produced results which did not indicate that any change was desired.
  • Two timescales that do not follow leap seconds are already available: International Atomic Time (TAI) and Global Positioning System (GPS) time. GPS time is easily obtained with inexpensive receivers.
  • The time indicated by sundials would no longer bear a fixed relation to civil time, but the CGPM (general congress of weights and measures, the international force behind the SI) recommendation to use UTC is predicated on the fact that the leaps keep it reasonably close to mean solar time.
  • When the proponents convened an international colloquium in 2003 they were told not to change UTC (because that would confuse everyone about its meaning), but to define a new time scale whose purpose was to serve their needs. They were also told that leap hours were not acceptable.
  • The process of discussing the proposals has been mostly shrouded in secrecy for years. Relevant ITU documents and meetings are not publicly available.

Several arguments for the abolition have also been presented. Some of these have only become relevant with the recent proliferation of computers using UTC as their internal time representation. For example, currently it is not possible to correctly compute the elapsed interval between two stated instants of UTC without consulting manually updated and maintained tables of when leap seconds have occurred. Moreover, it is not possible even in theory to compute such time intervals for instants more than about six months in the future. This is not a matter of computer programmers being "lazy"; rather, the uncertainty of leap seconds introduces to those applications needing accurate notions of elapsed time intervals either fundamentally new (and often untenable) operational burdens for computer systems (the need to do online lookups) or unsurmountable theoretical concerns (the inability in a UTC-based computer to accurately schedule any event more than six months in the future).

A counter to this argument is that computers need not use UTC. They could use TAI or GPS time and convert to UTC or local civil time as necessary for output. GPS time is an especially convenient choice, as inexpensive GPS timing receivers are readily available and the satellite broadcasts include the necessary information to convert GPS time to UTC. It is also easy to convert GPS time to TAI as TAI is always exactly 19 seconds ahead of GPS time.

Examples of systems based on GPS time include the CDMA digital cellular systems IS-95 and CDMA2000.

[edit] Vote to stop leap seconds

At the 47th meeting of Civil Global Positioning System Service Interface Committee in Fort Worth, Texas, it was announced that a mailed vote would go out on stopping leap seconds. The plan for the vote is:[7]

  • April 2008: ITU Working Party 7A will submit to ITU Study Group 7 project recommendation on stopping leap seconds
  • During 2008, Study Group 7 will conduct a vote through mail among member states
  • 2011: If 70% of member states agree, the World Radio Conference will approve the recommendation
  • 2013: application of leap seconds will stop and UTC will become a continuous time scale if 70% of member states have voted to abolish the leap second

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ F.R. Stephenson, L.V. Morrison. "Long-term fluctuations in the Earth's rotation: 700 BC to AD 1990". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series A 351 (1995) 165-202.
  2. ^ Leap second talks are postponed by BBC News
  3. ^ UTC redefinition or change by Kenneth Seidelmann
  4. ^ Cowen 2006
  5. ^ UTC might be redefined without Leap Seconds by Steve Allen
  6. ^ Proposed US Contribution to ITU-R WP 7A
  7. ^ 47th CGSIC Meeting - Timing Subcommittee (PDF) 9 (2007-9-25). Retrieved on 2007-11-18.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

[edit] UTC redefinition, leap seconds abolishment?