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The UTC offset is the difference in hours and minutes between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and local solar time, at a particular place. This difference is expressed with respect to UTC and is generally shown in the format , , or . So if the time being described is two hours ahead of UTC (such as in
A '' time zone'' is a geographical region in which residents observe the same
Time Service Dept., U.S. Naval Observatory
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Kigali
Kigali () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city of Rwanda. It is near the nation's geographic centre in a region of rolling hills, with a series of valleys and ridges joined by steep slopes. As a primate city, Kigali has been Rwa ...
, Rwanda
Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...
pprox. 30° E, the UTC offset would be "+02:00", "+0200", or simply "+02".
By convention, every inhabited place in the world has a UTC offset that is a multiple of 15 minutes but the majority of offsets are stated in whole hours. There are many cases where the national standard time
Standard time is the synchronisation of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...
uses a time zone that differs from the UTC offset appropriate to its longitude.
Time zones and time offsets
A '' time zone'' is a geographical region in which residents observe the same standard time
Standard time is the synchronisation of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...
. Although nominally a new time zone is established every 15 degrees east or west of the prime meridian (meaning a one hour change in solar time), in practice local geographical or political considerations may vary its application. The most extreme example of this is time in China, which applies a single standard time offset of UTC+08:00 (eight hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time), even though China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
spans five geographical time zones.
The UTC offset (or time offset) is an amount of time subtracted from or added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time to specify the local solar time (which may not be the current civil time, whether it is standard time or daylight saving time).
Daylight saving time
Several regions of the world use daylight saving time (DST) and the UTC offset during this season is typically obtained by adding one hour to local standard time. Central European Time UTC+01:00 is replaced by Central European Summer Time UTC+02:00, and Pacific Standard Time UTC−08:00 is replaced by Pacific Daylight Time UTC−07:00.Notable examples
See also
* ISO 8601 – international standard for representing dates and times.External links
Time Service Dept., U.S. Naval Observatory
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