Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a time system originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, and later became adopted as a global time standard. It is arguably the same as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and when this is viewed as a time zone the name Greenwich Mean Time is especially used by bodies connected with the United Kingdom, such as the BBC World Service,[1] the Royal Navy, the Met Office and others.
Before the introduction of UTC on 1 January 1972 Greenwich Mean Time (also known as Zulu time) was the same as Universal Time (UT) which is a standard astronomical concept used in many technical fields. Astronomers no longer use the term "Greenwich Mean Time".
In the United Kingdom, GMT is the official time only during winter; during summer British Summer Time is used. GMT is the same as Western European Time.[2]
Noon Greenwich Mean Time is rarely the exact moment when the noon sun crosses the Greenwich meridian (and reaches its highest point in the sky at Greenwich) because of Earth's uneven speed in its elliptic orbit and its axial tilt. This event may be up to 16 minutes away from noon GMT (a discrepancy calculated by the equation of time). The fictitious mean sun is the annual average of this nonuniform motion of the true Sun, necessitating the inclusion of mean in Greenwich Mean Time.
Historically the term GMT has been used with two different conventions, sometimes numbering hours starting at midnight and sometimes starting at noon. The more specific terms UT and UTC do not share this ambiguity, always referring to midnight as zero hours. Astronomers preferred the latter GMT convention in order to simplify their observational data so that each entire night was logged under one single calendar date.
Contents |
As the United Kingdom grew into an advanced maritime nation, British mariners kept at least one chronometer on GMT in order to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was by convention considered to have longitude zero degrees (this convention was internationally adopted in the International Meridian Conference of 1884). Note that the synchronization of the chronometer on GMT did not affect shipboard time itself, which was still solar time. But this practice, combined with mariners from other nations drawing from Nevil Maskelyne's method of lunar distances based on observations at Greenwich, eventually led to GMT being used worldwide as a reference time independent of location. Most time zones were based upon this reference as a number of hours and half-hours "ahead of GMT" or "behind GMT".
Greenwich Mean Time was adopted across the island of Great Britain by the Railway Clearing House in 1847, and by almost all railway companies by the following year, from which the term "railway time" is derived. It was gradually adopted for other purposes, but a legal case in 1858 held "local mean time" to be the official time. This changed in 1880, when GMT was legally adopted throughout the island of Great Britain. GMT was adopted on the Isle of Man in 1883, Jersey in 1898 and Guernsey in 1913. Ireland adopted Greenwich Mean Time in 1916, supplanting Dublin Mean Time.[3] Hourly time signals from Greenwich Observatory were first broadcast on 5 February 1924, rendering the time ball at the observatory obsolete in the process.
The daily rotation of the Earth is somewhat irregular (see ΔT) and is slowing down slightly; atomic clocks constitute a much more stable timebase. On 1 January 1972, GMT was replaced as the international time reference by Coordinated Universal Time, maintained by an ensemble of atomic clocks around the world. Universal Time (UT), a term introduced in 1928, initially represented mean time at Greenwich determined in the traditional way to accord with the originally-defined universal day; then from 1 January 1956 (as decided by the IAU at Dublin, 1955, at the initiative of William Markowitz) this 'raw' form of UT was re-labeled UT0 and effectively superseded by refined forms UT1 (UT0 equalized for the effects of polar wandering[4]) and UT2 (UT1 further equalized for annual seasonal variations in earth rotation rate). Leap seconds are nowadays added to or subtracted from UTC to keep it within 0.9 seconds of UT1.
Indeed, even the Greenwich meridian itself is not quite what it used to be—defined by 'the centre of the transit instrument at the Observatory at Greenwich'. Although that instrument still survives in working order, it is no longer in use and now the meridian of origin of the world's longitude and time is not strictly defined in material form but from a statistical solution resulting from observations of all time-determination stations which the BIPM takes into account when co-ordinating the world's time signals. Nevertheless, the line in the old observatory's courtyard today differs no more than a few metres from that imaginary line which is now the Prime Meridian of the world."[5]
Historically the term GMT has been used with two different conventions for numbering hours. The long-standing astronomical convention dating from the work of Ptolemy, was to refer to noon as zero hours (see Julian day). This contrasted with the civil convention of referring to midnight as zero hours dating from the Romans. The latter convention was adopted on and after 1 January 1925 for astronomical purposes as well, resulting in a discontinuity of 12 hours, or half a day earlier. The instant that was designated December 31.5 GMT in 1924 almanacs became January 1.0 GMT in 1925 almanacs. The term Greenwich Mean Astronomical Time (GMAT) was introduced to unambiguously refer to the previous noon-based astronomical convention for GMT.[6] The more specific terms UT and UTC do not share this ambiguity, always referring to midnight as zero hours.
Several countries throughout the world legislatively define their local time by explicit reference to Greenwich Mean Time.[7][8] Some examples are:
Those countries marked in dark blue on the map above use Western European Summer Time and advance their clock one hour in summer. In the United Kingdom, this is known as British Summer Time (BST); in the Republic of Ireland it is called Irish Standard Time (IST)[13] — officially changing to GMT in winter. Those countries marked in light blue keep their clocks on UTC/GMT/WET year round.
| Colour | Legal time vs local mean time |
|---|---|
| 1 h ± 30 m behind | |
| 0 h ± 30 m | |
| 1 h ± 30 m ahead | |
| 2 h ± 30 m ahead | |
| 3 h ± 30 m ahead |
Since legal, political, and economic criteria (in addition to purely physical or geographical criteria) are used in the drawing of time zones, it follows that actual time zones do not precisely adhere to meridian lines. The 'GMT' time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, would consist of exactly the area between meridians 7°30'W and 7°30'E. As a result, there are European locales that despite lying in an area with a 'physical' UTC time, actually use another time zone (UTC+1 in particular); contrariwise, there are European areas that use UTC, even though their 'physical' time zone is UTC−1 (e.g., most of Portugal), or even UTC−2 (the westernmost part of Iceland). Actually, because the UTC time zone in Europe is 'shifted' to the west, Lowestoft in Suffolk, East Anglia, England at only 1°45'E is the easternmost settlement in Europe in which UTC is applied. Following is a list of the 'incongruencies':
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||