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IERS Message No. 192: Questionnaire to survey opinion concerning a redefinition of UTC
by central_bureau＠iers.org July 11, 2011

July 11, 2011

************************************************************************ IERS Message No. 192 July 12, 2011 ************************************************************************ Questionnaire to survey opinion concerning a redefinition of UTC After years of discussions, a proposal to fundamentally redefine UTC will come to a conclusive vote in January 2012 at the ITU-R in Geneva. This proposal would halt the intercalary adjustments known as leap seconds that maintain UTC as a form of Universal Time. If the proposal is approved, UTC would not keep pace with Earth rotation and the value of DUT1 would become unconstrained. Therefore UTC would no longer be directly useful for various technical applications which rely on it being less than 1 second from UT1. Such applications would require a separate access to UT1, such as through the publication of DUT1 by other means. The objective of the survey is to find out the strength of opinion for maintaining or changing the present system. Link to the questionnaire: http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/index.php?index=questionnaire Your response is appreciated before 31 August 2011. Daniel Gambis Earth Orientation Center of the IERS ************************************************************************ IERS Messages are edited and distributed by the IERS Central Bureau. To submit texts for distribution and to subscribe or unsubscribe, please write to <central_bureau(a)iers.org>. Archives: http://www.iers.org/Messages/ ************************************************************************

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Re: DST in Fiji
by Petr Machata July 8, 2011

July 8, 2011

Hi there, I'm wondering if anyone knows whether Fiji should enter the period of DST in 2011 again, and when that should be. Timeanddate.com seem to expect it starts at years to come. But the only reference I was able to find is this one: http://www.fiji.gov.fj/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2608:da… And that seems only related to the DST period that occured in 2010/2011. In particular, in the following line: "Daylight Savings will be from October 24 to March 6, 2011" ... I don't think that "October 24" should be understod as October of 2011. (The zoneinfo project doesn't currenty assume the DST will start in 2011 an on.) Thanks, Petr Machata

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Bulletin C number 42
by IERS EOP Product Center July 8, 2011

July 8, 2011

INTERNATIONAL EARTH ROTATION AND REFERENCE SYSTEMS SERVICE (IERS) SERVICE INTERNATIONAL DE LA ROTATION TERRESTRE ET DES SYSTEMES DE REFERENCE SERVICE DE LA ROTATION TERRESTRE OBSERVATOIRE DE PARIS 61, Av. de l'Observatoire 75014 PARIS (France) Tel. : 33 (0) 1 40 51 22 26 FAX : 33 (0) 1 40 51 22 91 Internet : services.iers(a)obspm.fr Paris, 8 July 2011 Bulletin C 42 To authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time INFORMATION ON UTC - TAI NO positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2011. The difference between Coordinated Universal Time UTC and the International Atomic Time TAI is : from 2009 January 1, 0h UTC, until further notice : UTC-TAI = -34 s Leap seconds can be introduced in UTC at the end of the months of December or June, depending on the evolution of UT1-TAI. Bulletin C is mailed every six months, either to announce a time step in UTC, or to confirm that there will be no time step at the next possible date. Daniel GAMBIS Director Earth Orientation Center of IERS Observatoire de Paris, France IMPORTANT: After years of discussions, a proposal to fundamentally redefine UTC will come to a conclusive vote in January 2012 at the ITU-R in Geneva. This proposal would halt the intercalary adjustments known as leap seconds that maintain UTC as a form of Universal Time. The Earth Orientation Center of the IERS organizes a survey online with the objective to find out the strength of opinion for maintaining or changing the present system. Link to the questionnaire: http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/index.php?index=questionnaire Your response is appreciated before 30 August 2011 __________________________________________

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TAI zone?
by David Magda July 5, 2011

July 5, 2011

[Not a subscriber, so please CC.] Hello, There's been some discussion of removing leap seconds from UTC, as some people need/want a more predictable and deterministic time scale. [1] Given that International Atomic Time [2] exists, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to reference it. Is there any reason why a TAI "time zone" ("TZ=TAI; export TZ") is not present for those that want to ignore leap seconds? I noticed that some Linux distributions have a "right/" directory [3] to deal with this in some way: > Two different versions are provided: > - The "posix" version is based on the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). > - The "right" version is based on the International Atomic Time (TAI), > and it includes the leap seconds. [...] > > - TZDIR=/usr/share/zoneinfo/posix TZ=Europe/Paris on a system with > hardware clock set to UTC. > - TZDIR=/usr/share/zoneinfo/right TZ=Europe/Paris on a system with > hardware clock set to TAI. Regards, David [1] http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/5/107699-the-one-second-war/fulltext [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time [3] /usr/share/doc/tzdata/README.Debian

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Israel extends Daylight Savings Time
by Alexander Krivenyshev July 4, 2011

July 4, 2011

According to the Israel Prime Minister's Office (pmo.gov.il), Cabinet Approves draft legislation to extend Daylight Savings Time to an average of 193 days, as opposed to 182 today. Cabinet Approves Extension of Daylight Savings Time http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/Spokesman/2011/07/spokeclock0307… m or http://www.worldtimezone.com/dst_news/dst_news_israel03.html Alexander Krivenyshev http://www.worldtimezone.com

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[OT] Fwd: Why the name in America/Guayaquil?
by José Miguel Parrella Romero July 1, 2011

July 1, 2011

I'm forwarding this query to the list, and will greatly appreciate any comments. Thanks!

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Cairo TZ Environment Variable
by 雍義 July 1, 2011

July 1, 2011

Hello, I've just compiled tzdata2011h.tar.gz and found Cairo's TZ environment variable is empty. So I checked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt and use "EET-2". But I've never been to Cairo so I'm not absolute sure whether people there use that. Just FYI. Regards, Richard

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IERS Message No. 191: Colloquium on redefinition of UTC - Announcement
by central_bureau＠iers.org June 28, 2011

June 28, 2011

************************************************************************ IERS Message No. 191 June 28, 2011 ************************************************************************ Colloquium on redefinition of UTC - Announcement Decoupling Civil Timekeeping from Earth Rotation A Colloquium Exploring Implications of Redefining UTC in Astrodynamics, Astronomy, Geodesy, Navigation, Remote Sensing and Related Fields October 5-6, 2011 Headquarters of Analytical Graphics, Inc. 220 Valley Creek Blvd, Exton PA, 19341-2380 (near Philadelphia) Registration is now open at http://futureofutc.org Universal Time - the conventional measure of Earth rotation and astronomical time-of-day - is the traditional basis for civil timekeeping. Clocks worldwide are synchronized via Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), an atomic time scale recommended by the Radiocommunications Sector of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-R). A proposal to fundamentally redefine UTC will come to a conclusive vote in January 2012 at the Radiocommunications Assembly of the ITU-R in Geneva. It would halt the intercalary adjustments known as leap seconds that maintain UTC as a form of Universal Time, and eliminate the requirement that time services transmit the varying residuals (DUT1) between Coordinated Universal Time and Universal Time of day. If the proposal is approved, UTC would not keep pace with Earth rotation and the value of DUT1 would become unconstrained. Adverse impacts from redefining UTC have not been extensively researched and documented. The implications extend from technical infrastructure to legal, historical, logistical, sociological and economic domains. Affected technologies may include (but are not limited to) applications in astronomy, astrodynamics and celestial mechanics, geodesy, ground-to-space satellite communications, navigation, remote sensing and space surveillance. This meeting will provide a venue for discussing and documenting the repercussions of changing UTC along with possible mitigation strategies. Co-chairs: Rob Seaman, National Optical Astronomy Observatory John Seago, Analytical Graphics, Inc. Steve Allen, University of California Observatories / Lick Observatory ************************************************************************ IERS Messages are edited and distributed by the IERS Central Bureau. To submit texts for distribution and to subscribe or unsubscribe, please write to <central_bureau(a)iers.org>. Archives: http://www.iers.org/Messages/ ************************************************************************

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Lack of zone Asia/Beijing and other major cites in China
by An Yang June 27, 2011

June 27, 2011

Hi Arthur, Beijing is the capital of People's Republic of China from 1949, and Beijing Time is used in whole PRC according to China law by now. It's a good news for the people who live in China, if they could see Beijing and other major cites in China. If it's possible, I'm glad to contribute. Bests, An Yang

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lack of zone Asia/Beijing
by An Yang June 27, 2011

June 27, 2011

Hi Arthur, Beijing is the capital of People's Republic of China from 1949, and Beijing Time is used in whole PRC according to China law. Do you mind to add Beijing time zone? Bests, An Yang

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