On 2015-03-04 02:12 AM, michael.deckers via LEAPSECS wrote:
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.
We can't predict the future. It's fascinating to read about the many
factors affecting Earth's rotation. It seems the largest one is the one
we know least about - the Earth's core. I wonder what DUT1 would have
looked like around the time of the Chicxulub impactor.
Negative Leap Seconds have been a feature of the specification since the
beginning. It gives a little more margin to accommodate the unknown, and
it's not an onerous complication. I hope we concentrate on helping get
implementations to conform to the UTC specs as they stand rather than
look for justifications to over simplify the problem.
-Brooks
Michael Deckers.
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