[LEAPSECS] midyear leap roundup

[Steve Allen]

Last week saw the Science of Time symposium at Harvard with many of
the Time Lords in attendance.  The subject matter was far broader than
just leap seconds, but it gave a glimpse into the situation after last
year's ITU-R WRC-15 meeting.

For 15 years the subject of leap seconds had been ITU-R Question
236/7, and that is no longer open.  So the ITU-R has no action to
perform until the 2023 WRC.  Folks at Science of Time indicated that
actions other than in the ITU-R had to wait until that process had
failed.

In the mean time the BIPM expects to produce a document that (unlike
ITU-R TF.460) actually defines the construction of a time scale.  It
makes sense that we should be able to see that years in advance of the
2023 WRC.

Looking back, leading up to the WRC had been various Conference
Preparatory Meetings (CPM) that produced the draft document with the
methods for dealing with leap seconds (A, B, C, and, much later, D) to
be submitted to WRC-15.  During a several month period leading up to
that document the logs for leap second web pages showed a two-week
periodicity with thousands of HTTP GETs being funnelled through a
weblog hosted on a server accessible via a VPN.  That seemed to
confirm that the ITU-R process operates in a very closed fashion.  We
can hope that from now on the process will be more open.

Subsequent to the WRC-15 meeting the web logs have indicated etentes
between the US and the countries who submitted method D (which said
"make no change") to the WRC-15.  I surmise that the Department of
State holds a grudge against any country which dared to oppose the
"abolish leap seconds immediately" position of the US.

--
Steve Allen                    <sla at ucolick.org>              WGS-84 (GPS)
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