[LEAPSECS] next leap second

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Zefram <zefram at fysh.org> wrote:
> It would be nice to have more sophisticated projections from IERS more
> than a year ahead.  It would particularly help in evaluating the proposals
> that have been made involving scheduling leap seconds further ahead.

Especially if they had error bars that reflect the current confidence
levels, perhaps tested on historic data.

It would be really useful for IERS to say UT1-TAI = 75s +/- 20s at
AD2100 at 1000s at AD3000 (or whatever the numbers are). I realize
there's two sources of error here: crazy variations in the future
evolution of the earth's rotation as well as legitimate interpretation
differences of historical data. However, we know with a high level of
certainty that in AD3000 the difference isn't going to be 100s, nor
will it be 10,000s, and certainly not 100,000s. There's a range of
predictions, as numerous papers posted here have shown, and it may be
useful to have data on that.

But even short range predictions of the next decade or two would be
useful... If nothing else, it would help us test the state of the art
in prediction.

Warner