• News
  • A positive leap second must be introduced on December 31, 2016

A positive leap second must be introduced on December 31, 2016

19 Dec 16

A positive leap second must be introduced on December 31, 2016


clockThe International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) informs us that a positive leap second must be introduced on December 31, 2016.

The sequence of dates of the UTC second markers will be:

  • 31 December 2016, 23h 59m 59s
  • 31 December 2016, 23h 59m 60s
  • 1 January 2017, 0h 0m 0s

Please note that for Belgium, the leap second will be introduced on 1 January 2017 at 1 a.m. local time, which corresponds to midnight in UTC.

Contact:

Web:  time and frequency laboratory of Royal Observatory of Belgium.

Mail: time_lab@oma.be

Tel.: +32 (0) 2 373 02 60 (Pascale Defraigne) ou +32 (0) 2 373 02 83 (Bruno Bertrand).