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2016 will end with a leap second

2016-07-06

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) has announced that a leap second second will be added after 23:59:59 on 31 December 2016 UTC.

The last time a leap second was added, was in June 2015.

Leap seconds are inserted or removed when necessary to keep UTC within one second of mean solar time (UT1). Irregularities in the rotation of the Earth cause mean solar time to deviate from UTC. Without leap seconds, UTC time would slowly drift apart from mean solar time.

There has been a discussion about abolishing the leap second. The fate of the leap second will come up for review again in 2023.

You can watch the leap second occur on the Time.is leap second page.

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