[LEAPSECS] My FOSDEM slides

michael.deckers michael.deckers at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 4 02:12:53 EST 2015


    On 2015-03-03 21:05, Martin Burnicki wrote about
    negative leap seconds:

>  In the 7 year interval where no leap second was required/scheduled I heard
>  several people saying we might have needed a negative leap second.

    Fortunately, this is not a matter of speculation. An easy way to
    see the trend of UT1 - UTC is to look at DUT1 (published in
    Bulletin D). DUT1 is an approximation to UT1 - UTC and has
    always stepped down (except, of course, at positive leap seconds),
    ever since the earliest Bulletin D available on the web (1991-06-20).

    Before a negative leap seconds would be scheduled, we would see
    DUT1 stepping up several times in a row, so there _is_ some
    advance warning.

    Michael Deckers.



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