>
> Let's see…1 ppm is 0.0864 seconds per day. That is a leap second (or
> equivalent drift) every 11.57 days. A leap hour (presuming such is
> implementable) every 114 years. Is this acceptable? Says who? What process
> should be followed?
Exactly the same process that the UK followed on the 27th of October 1968.
You wouldn't be leaping UTC, you'd be leaping civil time. We're used to that.
You just spring forward, but don't fall back. Need the leap hour in the
opposite direction? Don't spring forward, but leap back, as we did on 31st
October 1971. What's so difficult about it?
Changing timezones by an hour has happened with monotonous regularity:
Portugal's done it several times, for example. Britain's tried UTC+0/UTC+1
(most commonly), UTC+1 (British Standard Time, 1968--71), UTC+1/UTC+2 ("British
Double Summer Time", 1940--1945), and UTC+0/UTC+2 (1947), so four civil time
standards in the lifespan of people still alive.
There are many arguments why the proposal to move the UK (or at least
not-Scotland's) time to align with mainland Europe is a good one, and some why
it's a bad one, but no-one sane has attempted the "oh, correcting our watches
is really hard" because people will just laugh.
There's been multiple leap-hours in my lifetime, including one-off ones, are
likely to be more, and within my parents' lifetime there's been leap-two-hours,
twice. Why is one extra leap-hour per century any different?
ian
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