UTC-06:00 | Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile, Ecuador, Canada, Mexico, United States UTC-07:00 | Canada, Mexico, United States UTC-08:00 | United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, France, United States UTC-10:00 | France, New Zealand, United States UTC-11:00 | New Zealand, United States, American Samoa

Here's a simplified, non-detailed list of the 38 UTC time offsets and the corresponding countries: Take a look at all time zones around the world. In other words, the time zone map indicates positive or negative offsets from UTC using the codes UTC- or UTC+ and the corresponding number of hours and minutes.įor instance, at UTC☐0, you'll find the United Kingdom at UTC+14:00, you'll get Kiribati's Line Islands. Solar time is the formula used to set civil time via UTC.Ī time offset is the amount of time added to or subtracted from UTC. There are two ways of establishing time on planet Earth - the atomic clock and solar time.Ītomics clocks are complex timekeeping mechanisms run by national governmental agencies and used on specific occasions, technologies, and systems. That is why countries located immediately west of the IDL - Tonga, Samoa, and Kiribati - are the first to celebrate the New Year. IDL is another imaginary line that passes through the middle of the Pacific Ocean and determines where you cross from one day to the next. Nevertheless, many people still use GMT as the time standard for all countries worldwide - for example, GMT+12:00 for New Zealand.īut there's also another important formalism - the International Date Line (IDL). UTC is precisely the same imaginary line defined by GMT at the Prime Meridian, located in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. It replaced the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in the late 1960s, even though GMT remains today as a regional time zone at UTC+00:00. The official time standard regulating the world's time and clocks is called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The Differences Between GMT, UTC, and IDL Take a look at the official world time zone map. So, we all end up getting 24 standard time zones and 14 additional exceptions.Īs a result, local time always depends on what time zone you're in at a given moment.Īs stated above, all nations have specific interests, so the time zone map is not as linear as it should be in theory. With the rotation of the Earth, from east to west, each meridian represents one given hour. They're technically named meridians, i.e., imaginary lines that run vertically from the North Pole to the South Pole, each 15 degrees apart.

However, in a world with borders, political, geographical, social interests, and lobbies, the officially established time zones make the planet look like a complicated geometrical drawing of longitudinal lines. Ideally, the planet would be divided between 24 identical time zones, each representing one hour of the day. When you fly between Los Angeles and New York, you must add three hours to your clock upon arriving at your destination.Īnd while someone is waking and getting ready for another working day under sunny skies, another is heading off to bed under the moonlight.

As a result, time is always different in various places on the planet. Welcome to the complex world of time zones. What time is it? Here's how a common daily question can have multiple answers.

Live time zone map