Looking for a way to celebrate the new year before midnight (for all you early risers out there)? Ever wonder what we mean when we refer to 12Z or 18Z in our forecast discussions? Since many people are watching clocks closely tonight, we thought it would be a good time to talk about Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), also known as Zulu time. Prior to the late 1800s, almost every town in the world kept its own local time. But from the 1850s through the 1880s, with the expansion of the railway system across the world, and the advent of nearly instantaneous long range communication (primarily telegraph at this point), it became clear that a universal way to measure time was needed. A conference was held in Washington D.C. in 1884, bringing together representatives from 25 different countries. By popular vote of the representatives, the Greenwich Meridian (which was marked at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England) was chosen as the Prime Meridian. In the modern day, not only does this help transportation interests, but its also very important to the Meteorology community. With the establishment of a globally accepted time, and with guidelines as to when, based on GMT, weather observations should be taken, meteorologists in the late 1800s and early 1900s were finally able to get a clear snap shot of weather conditions across large regions at the same time. With out this, weather analysis, and even computer models would not be nearly as accurate as they are today! So what does this have to do with celebrating New Years early? Well, GMT is 5 hours ahead of EST (4 hours ahead when were on Daylight Saving Time). So, in 45 minutes (at 7 PM EST), it will be midnight in GMT. Happy New Year! Further information is available at the Royal Observatory website: rmg.co.uk/about/history/royal-observatory
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 23:15:47 +0000