During the daylight savings time in the summer, this is even more pronounced: for example, the sun sets at about 9.40 pm in Anchorage, but the time there is actually 11.40 – in other words, a midnight sunset. Alaska spans several time zones, which means that the westernmost parts of the state are off by almost three hours from Central Alaska, and the easternmost parts are off by even more hours than the West.
This, however, isn’t without its own challenges and peculiarities. In 1918, the Interstate Commerce Commission was tasked with defining a unified Alaskan time for trade and commerce purposes, and the majority of Alaska observes the Alaska Standard Time since. This wasn’t always the case – in the early twentieth century, Alaska had a tough time figuring out its own timekeeping as several time zones (UTC-10, -9, and -11 were observed throughout the state, and Alaska varied between Yukon Standard and Pacific Standard Time, while Nome and the Aleutians observed Bering Standard Time). During the winter months, Alaska observes the Alaska standard Time or abbreviated AKST (UTC-9), and from March to November, the locals wind their clocks forward to observe the daylight savings time. If time zones are 15 degrees of longitude each, how is it possible that Alaska spans over five time zones, but only observes two? Cape Town and Madrid are in the same time zone, but Madrid and Lisbon are not: this is because time zones are calculated by West-East reference rather than North-South. Don’t let geography confuse you, though: time zones are “sliced” vertically rather than horizontally, which means that countries thousands of miles from each other may be in the same time zone, and countries relatively close to each other observe different time. Anything West of UTC will have a negative offset by one, two, three or more hours, depending on the longitude equally, anything East will have a positive offset depending on location. Now, the time zone differences are calculated using UTC. It’s just seconds, but for the sake of accuracy, in 1972, it was agreed to observe Coordinated Universal Time which is monitored by highly precise atomic clocks so that the “zero hour” always remains the same and isn’t slowly drifting away.Įver since, UTC has become a time standard, whereas GMT remains a time zone – but no longer a time standard. Sometimes, there are slight discrepancies in the earth’s rotation, causing what is known “leap seconds” – they occur when the Earth’s rotation is a little slower or faster than usual.
However, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), it turns out, isn’t as accurate as we previously thought. The Earth has 24 slices of 15 degrees each, and that’s your time zones right there. Taking the Greenwich Meridian as longitude zero, if you travel West by 15 degrees, the midday will occur one hour earlier than on Greenwich, and if you travel fifteen degrees East, it will be an hour late. The proposal was simple: since the Earth rotates 15 degrees every hour, that means that midday occurs at different times around the world. Time zones were first introduced in the nineteenth century, when the need to have coordinated time around the globe for trade, military, and transportation purposes became all too important. At the end of the article, we’ll share some fun facts about time zones – we bet you’ll be blown away how some parts of the world observe their time! Timing it Right: Coordinated Universal Time
FAIRBANKS ALASKA TIME ZONE HOW TO
In the following sections, we’ll explain what Coordinated Universal Time is, how to calculate time zone differences, and how Alaska Standard Time or AKST is observed throughout the year. After all, no one wants to be woken up at 3am to answer a business call or log in to a Zoom meeting at midnight. Let’s take a look: if you work or communicate with people living in Alaska, it pays to understand the time zones and time zone differences, so you always time your calls or work schedules right. How does that work, and what is UTC in the first place? To add to the confusion, the Alaska Standard Time is the same as Hawaiian time… In fact, Cape Wrangell should technically fall into UTC-13 as the sun sets at midnight here, and Adak time is more towards UTC-12 – not the UTC-9 of the Alaska Standard Time. However, the entire territory of Alaska easily spans over five time zones – as many as the contiguous United States – and a large portion of the state actually falls under the UTC-10 an UTC-11 time zone rather than the Alaska Standard Time.
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Alaska Standard Time is nine hours behind the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC-9) during the daylight saving time, the offset is eight hours from UTC.
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