[LEAPSECS] Comments on predictions for this century

Steve Allen sla at ucolick.org
Sat Jan 17 17:43:24 EST 2015


On Fri 2015-01-16T18:53:12 +0000, Matsakis, Demetrios hath writ:
> It's a shame that in this regard your extensive and lovingly
> worked-out web pages may spread disinformation.

> perhaps you could add a prominent note indicating that they are all
> wrong about the near future - and that one reasonable analysis
> predicts that the effect would be < 1 minute by 2100.

There is another reasonable analysis by two other folks who worked at
USNO.  McCarthy and Klepczynski wrote the article that was published
in GPS World (1999) v10, #11, pp50-57 where we read
    The difference between UT1 and UTC would near one minute in 2050,
    if no further leap seconds were inserted in UTC.
and
    By the end of the twenty-first century, we see that UTC would be
    expected to differ from UT1 by more than two minutes.

Their plots and analysis were reprinted as part of the article by
Nelson et al. in Metrologia (2001) v38 pp509-529 where we read
    By the end of the twenty-first century, the expected difference
    would be about 2.5 min

I think this is one of those cases where we can all agree that
it's not the size that matters.

So I could add a prominent note pointing out all of these things, but
I do not see the point.  My web pages would just become bigger piles
of library research into that show how past decisions led to the
current mess but beyond that aren't much good outside of helping the
researchers for "Jeopardy!" come up with obscure clues and responses to
confound the contestants.

Unless something significant changes in these discussions I don't see
how the national delegates to the ITU-R WRC in November are going to
find a basis for making their decision.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB   Natural Sciences II, Room 165    Lat  +36.99855
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