Clock Change

Back to Basics:

As you all are aware that it takes 24 hours for the Earth to rotate once on its axis. We split the globe into time zones using imaginary lines called meridians. They run from the North Pole to the South Pole, crossing lines of latitude. There are 24 time zones. Out of these 24 there is one such imaginary line running through the UK called the Prime Meridian. It runs through a place in London called Greenwich. I am yet to visit this place in London UK, I will promise to share the pics of that imaginary line with me . The Prime Meridian splits the world into eastern and western hemispheres. Time in countries to the east of the Prime Meridian is always in front of that in the UK. Time in countries to the west of the Prime Meridian is always behind that of the UK. You can refer to the below picture. As the Earth rotates on its axis, the Sun only shines on the side of the Earth that it is facing. This means:

• It is daytime for the parts of the Earth that have the Sun shining on them
• It is night-time for places that are on the opposite side of the Earth and are in the shade

Time zones are not always in straight lines on the longitudes on Earth. This is because they may need to curve around country borders. You can see this in the map below.

What is Daylight Saving?

 

Daylight saving, is the practice of advancing clocks (typically by one hour) during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time. The typical implementation of DST is to set clocks forward by one hour in the spring (spring - forward), and to set clocks back by one hour in the Autumn (Autumn -- back) to return to standard time. As a result, there is one 23-hour day in early spring and one 25-hour day in the middle of autumn.

 

What are the time Zones for Europe?

As you can see the below picture, whole Europe is divided into 3 time zones.  They are namely GMT, CET and EET. The long forms are also can be seen in the below picture. Please note GMT is also called as western European time.

As you and me are all engaged in many of our End users(customers) in European countries which are spread across these three time zones.

GMT -- Longford, Naas, QK – Ireland, PortSalvo (Lisbon) - Portugal, Aunt Bessie’s, Bedfont, Gloucester, Hull Peas, Lowestoft -- United Kingdom

CET -- Gorss-Enzedorf, Vienna - Austria, Drogenhos - Belgium, Rorschach -Switzerland, Copenhagen - Denmark, Cisterna, Rome - Italy, Utrecht - Netherland, Larvik, Lysaker, Tonsberg - Norway, Madrid, Valladolid-Spain, Loftahammar, Malmo, Selleberga - Sweden, BSM, Noisy Le Grand (Paris) - France, Bremerhaven, Hamburg, Reken Coldstore, Reken factory - Germany

EET -- Vantaa – Finland

 

 

You may be already thinking what is this UTC and GMT? GMT you already know the above acronym. UTC is Coordinated Universal Time. What is the difference between them ?? and is there difference between them at all? Answer is yes and one should know that the time difference between GMT and UTC is a fraction of a second and, for most common purposes, that difference is insignificant and considered as no difference.

 

GMT is a country-based time standard. It is used primarily by bodies associated with the United Kingdom like the BBC World Service, the Royal Navy, and the Met Office.

 

UTC, which stands for Coordinated Universal Time, is an international time scale recommended by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) as the legal basis for time. It is a method of measuring time using atomic clocks. To determine the international standard of Coordinated Universal Time, the Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris Coordinates data from atomic clocks located in timing laboratories around the globe. It is interesting to note that leap seconds are added to UTC to compensate for the slowing rotation of the Earth. It is important to know that leap seconds are used to allow UTC to track the mean solar time in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.

 

UTC is the time standard used for Internet and World Wide Web standards. It is also the basis of the satellite global positioning system (GPS). UTC is used by the Network Time Protocol, created to synchronize the clocks of many computers over the Internet. Thus, it can be said that the UTC is Internet based time standard.

 

It is often thought that time zones around the world are positive or negative offsets from UTC. In fact, it is quite true that UTC replaced GMT as the main reference time scale in various regions.

 

I remember my programing days where I used to write UTC time conversion in CRM based BSP application to calculate the put the time stamp processed by different sales agents across Europe and USA. I was working for Telecom Giant of Sweden who has presence in 40 countries in Europe USA and Middle East.

 

 

 

What is a clock change in UK?

Every year the clocks change twice a year in the UK, going forward in the spring (March) and then back again in the autumn (October). Spring is the transition season between winter and summer during which we see days getting longer, temperatures warming and plants blossoming in time for summer. Autumn is when the nights start to draw in and temperatures start feeling cooler.

As you see in spring the days are longer and Autumn the days are shorter, in order to address this kind of phenomenon clock changes are designed to maximize our daylight hours to reflect the passing of the seasons.

 

When will UK Clock Changes in 2023?

 

26 Mar 2023 - Daylight Saving Time Starts

When local standard time is about to reach Sunday, 26 March 2023, 01:00:00 clocks are turned forward 1 hour to Sunday, 26 March 2023, 02:00:00 local daylight time instead.

29 Oct 2023 - Daylight Saving Time Ends

When local daylight time is about to reach Sunday, 29 October 2023, 02:00:00 clocks are turned backward 1 hour to Sunday, 29 October 2023, 01:00:00 local standard time instead.

How it Impacts you?

This is very essential to you all who all based out in India and supporting European country customers, you need to be aware of these changes mandatorily. When these clock changes not only your meeting time or support time changes but also many applications including SAP need to change their server system time to match this. That’s why you see we all are having a change activity on 26^th Mar where we shut down the various application servers and change the system time and restart them.

As a result of this India will have the time difference changed from 5 Hour  30 minutes to 4 hours 30 minutes when compared to UK.  So, lets illustrate this with an real example, suppose you have scheduled a meeting on 27^th Mar 2023 Monday with one of your customer at 8.00 AM UK time and 1.30 PM India time. When the meeting starts actually on 27^th Mar it will be 7.00 AM in UK and 12.30 PM India time instead. So one needs to be mindful of this. On the same lines on 29^th Oct 2023 when clock change happens again, the time difference goes back to 5.30 hours as illustrated in the above picture.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and must be clear on what is Day Light Saving, Europe TimeZones, Clock Change in UK etc.