Timezones of the the world

A Quick Guide To World Timezones

World timezones are actually a relatively new part of the way that the civilized world works. World timezones were created in order to create a certain amount of uniformity in how people describe their time of day in different parts of the world. Using local or solar time makes it nearly impossible for a modern society to work. If we didn't have world timezones, scheduling trains would be nearly impossible, planning meetings in different countries would quickly prove problematic, and similar issues would arise daily.
 
Daylight doesn't hit the world uniformly, which means that if there was a single standard time worldwide, you would have a completely different impression of what 10:00 AM would look like. Though this does not sound like a major problem, it does make many things difficult to describe, such as the time of day. In the times before world timezones, people would often find it nearly impossible to schedule meetings at a long distance due to the difficulty in coming to an agreement on what time it was. World timezones are made for legal, social, and commercial purposes in mind.
 
Initially, there was only one real way to distinguish different world time zones. However, there are now multiple ways to discern time using a world clock. Still, the most common way to deal with the world clock is to use the Greenwich Mean Time, also known as GMT, as a measuring stick. Standard world timezones are made with an offset of hours referring to GMT. So, New Zealand's time is often quoted as being 11 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Greenwich Mean Time.
 
Advancements in the measuring of time allowed scientists to come up with a system that allows them to take into account the seconds that are lost with each year. This doesn't sound like much, but seconds do add up to minutes eventually. The newer form of time-telling using world timezones is called UTC, and is based off of GMT time-telling.
 
Normally, one would simply believe that GMT and UTC timezones are enough. But still, there are even more ways of differentiating time zones for those who are curious.
 
Many countries have chosen to use their own standard time zones, and so have many different groups of people. Military personnel often use military time zones to plan their maneuvers. Nautical time zones, which are non-skewed, are very common among people who frequently travel by boat. When it comes to different countries and continents, other common ways of dividing time zones include CET (Central European Time), and New Zealand Mean Time.
 
There is still a lot of bickering about which timezones are actually the best ones to use universally. There really isn't a universally accepted time zone scheme, and things are even more complicated when Daylight Savings Time is taken into consideration. Many, if not most, countries no longer practice Daylight Savings Time. The issue of Daylight Savings Time, or DST, has been one that has caused a certain amount of friction in international airports, as well as a lot of confusion abroad.
 
Travelers who are looking to find a reliable way to tell time abroad are best off using world timezones that are used by both military and naval personalities. They are often the most accurate ways to tell time. Of course, for those who are scheduling meetings, and figuring out when they will be able to catch a plane, it's best to search up the current world timezones your destination location happens to be using. After all, it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Timezones in North America

The following table lists the North American time zone abbreviations.

Abbreviation	Full name	Other abbreviations	Time zone
NST	Newfoundland Standard Time	HNT	UTC - 3:30 hours
NDT	Newfoundland Daylight Time	HAT	UTC - 2:30 hours
AST	Atlantic Standard Time	HNA	UTC - 4 hours
ADT	Atlantic Daylight Time	HAA	UTC - 3 hours
EST	Eastern Standard Time	HNE	UTC - 5 hours
EDT	Eastern Daylight Time	HAE	UTC - 4 hours
CST	Central Standard Time	HNC	UTC - 6 hours
CDT	Central Daylight Time	HAC	UTC - 5 hours
MST	Mountain Standard Time	HNR	UTC - 7 hours
MDT	Mountain Daylight Time	HAR	UTC - 6 hours
PST	Pacific Standard Time	HNP	UTC - 8 hours
PDT	Pacific Daylight Time	HAP	UTC - 7 hours
AKST	Alaska Standard Time	HNY	UTC - 9 hours
AKDT	Alaska Daylight Time	HAY	UTC - 8 hours
HAST	Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time	HST	UTC - 10 hours
HADT	Hawaii-Aleutian Daylight Time		UTC - 9 hours

Timezones in Australia

The following table lists the Australian time zone abbreviations.

Abbreviation	Full name	Other abbreviations	Time zone
NFT	Norfolk (Island) Time		UTC + 11:30 hours
EST	Eastern Standard Time	AEST	UTC + 10 hours
EDT	Eastern Daylight Time	AEDT, EST	UTC + 11 hours
CST	Central Standard Time	ACST	UTC + 9:30 hours
CDT	Central Daylight Time	ACDT, CST	UTC + 10:30 hours
WST	Western Standard Time	AWST	UTC + 8 hours
WDT	Western Daylight Time	AWDT, WST	UTC + 9 hours
CXT	Christmas Island Time		UTC + 7 hours

Timezones in Europe

The following table lists the European time zone abbreviations.

The term “IST” is not the legal abbreviation to describe Irish Summer Time but it is commonly used. IST is described as “summer time”, according to Irish law, while Irish Standard Time is described as both “standard time” and “winter time”.

Abbreviation	Full name	Other abbreviations	Time zone
GMT	Greenwich Mean Time	UTC	UTC
BST	British Summer Time		UTC + 1 hour
IST	Irish Summer Time		UTC + 1 hour
WET	Western European Time		UTC
WEST	Western European Summer Time	WEDT	UTC + 1 hour
CET	Central European Time	MEZ	UTC + 1 hour
CEST	Central European Summer Time	CEDT, MESZ	UTC + 2 hours
EET	Eastern European Time		UTC + 2 hours
EEST	Eastern European Summer Time	EEDT	UTC + 3 hours
MSK	Moscow Standard Time		UTC + 3 hours
MSD	Moscow Daylight Time		UTC + 4 hours

Military / NATO / letter timezones

The following table lists the Military time zone abbreviations.

The basis for this is Z - Zulu time - Zero meridian time - the same as UTC It's a convention to assign letters to time zones, where Z= Zero meridian, and Zulu is the word that represents the letter Z, when it's used in communication. It is sometimes used in the US Military and NATO in conjunction with 24 hour clocks, and is also popular to use in movies to reference time.

Other letters/words are used for other time zones than UTC, most based on the right or reverse order of the Alphabet. Note that 'J' is skipped ('J' - Juliet refers to current local time of the observer). There are 25 time zones defined here, but 26 letters in the English alphabet.

Abbreviation	Full name	Other abbreviations	Time zone
Z	Zulu Time Zone		UTC
Y	Yankee Time Zone		UTC - 12 hours
X	X-ray Time Zone		UTC - 11 hours
W	Whiskey Time Zone		UTC - 10 hours
V	Victor Time Zone		UTC - 9 hours
U	Uniform Time Zone		UTC - 8 hours
T	Tango Time Zone		UTC - 7 hours
S	Sierra Time Zone		UTC - 6 hours
R	Romeo Time Zone		UTC - 5 hours
Q	Quebec Time Zone		UTC - 4 hours
P	Papa Time Zone		UTC - 3 hours
O	Oscar Time Zone		UTC - 2 hours
N	November Time Zone		UTC - 1 hour
A	Alpha Time Zone		UTC + 1 hour
B	Bravo Time Zone		UTC + 2 hours
C	Charlie Time Zone		UTC + 3 hours
D	Delta Time Zone		UTC + 4 hours
E	Echo Time Zone		UTC + 5 hours
F	Foxtrot Time Zone		UTC + 6 hours
G	Golf Time Zone		UTC + 7 hours
H	Hotel Time Zone		UTC + 8 hours
I	India Time Zone		UTC + 9 hours
K	Kilo Time Zone		UTC + 10 hours
L	Lima Time Zone		UTC + 11 hours
M	Mike Time Zone		UTC + 12 hours

The decrease in daylight during the winter months is due to Earth's axial tilt of 23 degrees. If the Earth was not tilted on it's axis, the length of day and night would remain steady year long. During winter in the northern hemisphere there is less daylight hours, and the southern hemisphere in turn has longer daylight hours and experiences summer.

The main purpose of Daylight Saving Time (called "Summer Time" in many places in the world) is to make better use of daylight. In Ireland we advance our clocks forward by one hour in Spring to maximise daylight for the summer months. This has the effect of moving an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. In Winter the clocks are then changed back by one hour to maximise daylight during morning hours.

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