leap-seconds.list revision 280413
1#
2#	In the following text, the symbol '#' introduces
3#	a comment, which continues from that symbol until
4#	the end of the line. A plain comment line has a
5#	whitespace character following the comment indicator.
6#	There are also special comment lines defined below.
7#	A special comment will always have a non-whitespace
8#	character in column 2.
9#
10#	A blank line should be ignored.
11#
12#	The following table shows the corrections that must
13#	be applied to compute International Atomic Time (TAI)
14#	from the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) values that
15#	are transmitted by almost all time services.
16#
17#	The first column shows an epoch as a number of seconds
18#	since 1 January 1900, 00:00:00 (1900.0 is also used to
19#	indicate the same epoch.) Both of these time stamp formats
20#	ignore the complexities of the time scales that were
21#	used before the current definition of UTC at the start
22#	of 1972. (See note 3 below.)
23#	The second column shows the number of seconds that
24#	must be added to UTC to compute TAI for any timestamp
25#	at or after that epoch. The value on each line is
26#	valid from the indicated initial instant until the
27#	epoch given on the next one or indefinitely into the
28#	future if there is no next line.
29#	(The comment on each line shows the representation of
30#	the corresponding initial epoch in the usual
31#	day-month-year format. The epoch always begins at
32#	00:00:00 UTC on the indicated day. See Note 5 below.)
33#
34#	Important notes:
35#
36#	1. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is often referred to
37#	as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The GMT time scale is no
38#	longer used, and the use of GMT to designate UTC is
39#	discouraged.
40#
41#	2. The UTC time scale is realized by many national
42#	laboratories and timing centers. Each laboratory
43#	identifies its realization with its name: Thus
44#	UTC(NIST), UTC(USNO), etc. The differences among
45#	these different realizations are typically on the
46#	order of a few nanoseconds (i.e., 0.000 000 00x s)
47#	and can be ignored for many purposes. These differences
48#	are tabulated in Circular T, which is published monthly
49#	by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
50#	(BIPM). See www.bipm.org for more information.
51#
52#	3. The current definition of the relationship between UTC
53#	and TAI dates from 1 January 1972. A number of different
54#	time scales were in use before that epoch, and it can be
55#	quite difficult to compute precise timestamps and time
56#	intervals in those "prehistoric" days. For more information,
57#	consult:
58#
59#		The Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical
60#		Ephemeris.
61#	or
62#		Terry Quinn, "The BIPM and the Accurate Measurement
63#		of Time," Proc. of the IEEE, Vol. 79, pp. 894-905,
64#		July, 1991.
65#
66#	4. The decision to insert a leap second into UTC is currently
67#	the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation and
68#	Reference Systems Service. (The name was changed from the
69#	International Earth Rotation Service, but the acronym IERS
70#	is still used.)
71#
72#	Leap seconds are announced by the IERS in its Bulletin C.
73#
74#	See www.iers.org for more details.
75#
76#	Every national laboratory and timing center uses the
77#	data from the BIPM and the IERS to construct UTC(lab),
78#	their local realization of UTC.
79#
80#	Although the definition also includes the possibility
81#	of dropping seconds ("negative" leap seconds), this has
82#	never been done and is unlikely to be necessary in the
83#	foreseeable future.
84#
85#	5. If your system keeps time as the number of seconds since
86#	some epoch (e.g., NTP timestamps), then the algorithm for
87#	assigning a UTC time stamp to an event that happens during a positive
88#	leap second is not well defined. The official name of that leap
89#	second is 23:59:60, but there is no way of representing that time
90#	in these systems.
91#	Many systems of this type effectively stop the system clock for
92#	one second during the leap second and use a time that is equivalent
93#	to 23:59:59 UTC twice. For these systems, the corresponding TAI
94#	timestamp would be obtained by advancing to the next entry in the
95#	following table when the time equivalent to 23:59:59 UTC
96#	is used for the second time. Thus the leap second which
97#	occurred on 30 June 1972 at 23:59:59 UTC would have TAI
98#	timestamps computed as follows:
99#
100#	...
101#	30 June 1972 23:59:59 (2287785599, first time):	TAI= UTC + 10 seconds
102#	30 June 1972 23:59:60 (2287785599,second time):	TAI= UTC + 11 seconds
103#	1  July 1972 00:00:00 (2287785600)		TAI= UTC + 11 seconds
104#	...
105#
106#	If your system realizes the leap second by repeating 00:00:00 UTC twice
107#	(this is possible but not usual), then the advance to the next entry
108#	in the table must occur the second time that a time equivalent to
109#	00:00:00 UTC is used. Thus, using the same example as above:
110#
111#	...
112#       30 June 1972 23:59:59 (2287785599):		TAI= UTC + 10 seconds
113#       30 June 1972 23:59:60 (2287785600, first time):	TAI= UTC + 10 seconds
114#       1  July 1972 00:00:00 (2287785600,second time):	TAI= UTC + 11 seconds
115#	...
116#
117#	in both cases the use of timestamps based on TAI produces a smooth
118#	time scale with no discontinuity in the time interval. However,
119#	although the long-term behavior of the time scale is correct in both
120#	methods, the second method is technically not correct because it adds
121#	the extra second to the wrong day.
122#
123#	This complexity would not be needed for negative leap seconds (if they
124#	are ever used). The UTC time would skip 23:59:59 and advance from
125#	23:59:58 to 00:00:00 in that case. The TAI offset would decrease by
126#	1 second at the same instant. This is a much easier situation to deal
127#	with, since the difficulty of unambiguously representing the epoch
128#	during the leap second does not arise.
129#
130#	Some systems implement leap seconds by amortizing the leap second
131#	over the last few minutes of the day. The frequency of the local
132#	clock is decreased (or increased) to realize the positive (or
133#	negative) leap second. This method removes the time step described
134#	above. Although the long-term behavior of the time scale is correct
135#	in this case, this method introduces an error during the adjustment
136#	period both in time and in frequency with respect to the official
137#	definition of UTC.
138#
139#	Questions or comments to:
140#		Judah Levine
141#		Time and Frequency Division
142#		NIST
143#		Boulder, Colorado
144#		Judah.Levine@nist.gov
145#
146#	Last Update of leap second values:   5 January 2015
147#
148#	The following line shows this last update date in NTP timestamp
149#	format. This is the date on which the most recent change to
150#	the leap second data was added to the file. This line can
151#	be identified by the unique pair of characters in the first two
152#	columns as shown below.
153#
154#$	 3629404800
155#
156#	The NTP timestamps are in units of seconds since the NTP epoch,
157#	which is 1 January 1900, 00:00:00. The Modified Julian Day number
158#	corresponding to the NTP time stamp, X, can be computed as
159#
160#	X/86400 + 15020
161#
162#	where the first term converts seconds to days and the second
163#	term adds the MJD corresponding to the time origin defined above.
164#	The integer portion of the result is the integer MJD for that
165#	day, and any remainder is the time of day, expressed as the
166#	fraction of the day since 0 hours UTC. The conversion from day
167#	fraction to seconds or to hours, minutes, and seconds may involve
168#	rounding or truncation, depending on the method used in the
169#	computation.
170#
171#	The data in this file will be updated periodically as new leap
172#	seconds are announced. In addition to being entered on the line
173#	above, the update time (in NTP format) will be added to the basic
174#	file name leap-seconds to form the name leap-seconds.<NTP TIME>.
175#	In addition, the generic name leap-seconds.list will always point to
176#	the most recent version of the file.
177#
178#	This update procedure will be performed only when a new leap second
179#	is announced.
180#
181#	The following entry specifies the expiration date of the data
182#	in this file in units of seconds since the origin at the instant
183#	1 January 1900, 00:00:00. This expiration date will be changed
184#	at least twice per year whether or not a new leap second is
185#	announced. These semi-annual changes will be made no later
186#	than 1 June and 1 December of each year to indicate what
187#	action (if any) is to be taken on 30 June and 31 December,
188#	respectively. (These are the customary effective dates for new
189#	leap seconds.) This expiration date will be identified by a
190#	unique pair of characters in columns 1 and 2 as shown below.
191#	In the unlikely event that a leap second is announced with an
192#	effective date other than 30 June or 31 December, then this
193#	file will be edited to include that leap second as soon as it is
194#	announced or at least one month before the effective date
195#	(whichever is later).
196#	If an announcement by the IERS specifies that no leap second is
197#	scheduled, then only the expiration date of the file will
198#	be advanced to show that the information in the file is still
199#	current -- the update time stamp, the data and the name of the file
200#	will not change.
201#
202#	Updated through IERS Bulletin C49
203#	File expires on:  28 December 2015
204#
205#@	3660249600
206#
2072272060800	10	# 1 Jan 1972
2082287785600	11	# 1 Jul 1972
2092303683200	12	# 1 Jan 1973
2102335219200	13	# 1 Jan 1974
2112366755200	14	# 1 Jan 1975
2122398291200	15	# 1 Jan 1976
2132429913600	16	# 1 Jan 1977
2142461449600	17	# 1 Jan 1978
2152492985600	18	# 1 Jan 1979
2162524521600	19	# 1 Jan 1980
2172571782400	20	# 1 Jul 1981
2182603318400	21	# 1 Jul 1982
2192634854400	22	# 1 Jul 1983
2202698012800	23	# 1 Jul 1985
2212776982400	24	# 1 Jan 1988
2222840140800	25	# 1 Jan 1990
2232871676800	26	# 1 Jan 1991
2242918937600	27	# 1 Jul 1992
2252950473600	28	# 1 Jul 1993
2262982009600	29	# 1 Jul 1994
2273029443200	30	# 1 Jan 1996
2283076704000	31	# 1 Jul 1997
2293124137600	32	# 1 Jan 1999
2303345062400	33	# 1 Jan 2006
2313439756800	34	# 1 Jan 2009
2323550089600	35	# 1 Jul 2012
2333644697600	36	# 1 Jul 2015
234#
235#	the following special comment contains the
236#	hash value of the data in this file computed
237#	use the secure hash algorithm as specified
238#	by FIPS 180-1. See the files in ~/pub/sha for
239#	the details of how this hash value is
240#	computed. Note that the hash computation
241#	ignores comments and whitespace characters
242#	in data lines. It includes the NTP values
243#	of both the last modification time and the
244#	expiration time of the file, but not the
245#	white space on those lines.
246#	the hash line is also ignored in the
247#	computation.
248#
249#h	45e70fa7 a9df2033 f4a49ab0 ec648273 7b6c22c
250