[LEAPSECS] What happened in the late 1990s to slow the rate of leap seconds?

[Hal Murray]

There is a nice graph here:
  http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/earthor/utc/leapsecond.html

Was there a geological incident that explains things?

We didn't have any leap seconds for 7 years.  From the leap second file:
  3124137600      32      # 1 Jan 1999
  3345062400      33      # 1 Jan 2006

There is another warp in the graph in the late 1980s.  Things slowed down for 
several year, but not as dramatically as the early 2000s.

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