Greenland has three different time zones, as most of the country is three hours behind Greenwich Mean Time. If it were independent, Greenland would be the world’s 12th largest country in terms of size. Xinjiang, a region in the most western part of the country, uses a different local time known as Xinjiang Time, which is two hours behind CST.
However, a part of China uses an unofficial time zone. With the official national standard time being Beijing Time (BJT) or China Standard Time (CST), daylight saving time has not been part of the picture since 1991.
In fact, the country has only one time zone, even if its territory spreads into almost five geographical time zones. It would be logical to think that multiple time zones existed in China, however, it would be wrong. Time zon es in ChinaĬhina is the third-largest country in the world, with almost 1.5 bln people living in it. Since 2007, the standard time zones are categorised in hourly intervals from UTC, while they were based on the movement of the Sun in the sky compared with meridians 15° apart west Greenwich (GMT). That’s not to mention half-hour time zones, similar to the old Amsterdam time, which ruled that Amsterdam was 20 minutes ahead of London.Ī report by the inspector general of the DOT explained that “The official boundaries are narratively described with various types of coordinates and geographic features such as lines of longitude, State or country lines, and rivers.” Australia, on the other hand, has three time zones. However, not all countries follow the same conventions: China, for instance, operates in one single time zone (CST). That line determines the rest of the time zones around the world. Time was standardised and a prime meridian was chosen as Greenwich, London (hence Greenwich Mean Time), with eight countries aligning including, France, Spain, Algeria and Togo. In 1884, 26 countries met in Washington, DC, to attend the Meridian Conference. Clocks display time from various time zones at Warsaw Stock Exchange, Poland, part of Central European Time. as well as in Canada.īeginning and end dates of the daylight saving time in the United States and in Canada.Time zones are pretty simple, right? In the EU, there are three standardised time zones: Western European Time in Ireland and Portugal, Central European Time, covering the bulk of the mainland such as Germany and Poland, and Eastern European Time, which includes Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus. Specifically, it is Eastern Standard Time (EST) when standard time is observed (winter), and Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) when daylight saving time is observed (spring, summer and autumn).Įffective since 2007, the local time changes from EST to EDT at 02:00 LST to 03:00 LDT on the second Sunday in March, and returns at 02:00 LDT to 01:00 LST on the first Sunday in November, in the U.S.A. In the United States and Canada, this time zone is generally called Eastern Time (ET). The time in this zone is based on the mean solar time of the 75th meridian west of the Greenwich Observatory. Its time offset is −5 hours (UTC/GMT -5) during standard time and −4 hours (UTC/GMT -4) during daylight saving time. The Eastern Time Zone is also known as Eastern Standard Time (EST) falls mostly along the east coast of North America.