Rob Seaman wrote:
> ...
> Here is my alternative baseline proposal:
>
> http://iraf.noao.edu/~seaman/leap
>
> It requires minimal discussion since it's already the standard.
> ...
In this paper Rob Seaman argues that, since the Earth's rotation is
now predicted better than needed to meet the minimum requirments set
by the definition of UTC, leap seconds should be scheduled more
flexibly (at the end of any month, as allowed by the UTC definition)
in order to minimize the differences between UTC and UT1.
It is difficult to imagine that there are many people who:
a) need an approximation to UT1 which is better than upto 0.9
seconds off but would be OK if it was not much more than 0.5
seconds and
b) don't have access to a reasonably fresh value for DUT1.
I.e., will reducing DUT1 from a maximum of 0.8s or so as happens in
practice to just over 0.5s actually help anybody?
Perhaps a better use for the margin provided by better than required
prediction of the Earth's rotation would be to increase the guarenteed
notice of leap seconds from the defined 8 weeks to closer to the
current practice of nearly 6 months.
Ed.
Received on Tue May 06 2003 - 08:08:02 PDT