Riddle me this: what time is it at the earth's poles right now?

March 16, 2020 2:10 PM

At the North Pole, it’s all ocean, visited only rarely by an occasional research vessel or a lonely supply ship that strayed from the Northwest Passage. Sea captains choose their own time in the central Arctic. They may maintain the time zones of bordering countries—or they may switch based on ship activities. Sitting here in my grounded office, it is baffling to think about a place where a single human can decide to create an entire time zone at any instant. Time Has No Meaning at the North Pole -- The utter lack of time zones, daylight and people creates a bizarre world (Katie Weeman for the Scientific American blog)

More from SciAm:

At Earth’s other pole, time zones are quirky but rooted in utility. In Antarctica there is land and dozens of research stations scattered across thousands of square miles. At most stations, permanent buildings house laboratories, living quarters and social spaces. Each mini civilization has adopted its own time zone that corresponds with the home territory that built each place.

Where noon comes just once a year -- At Earth’s South Pole, high noon happens only once a year, on the December solstice. And meanwhile, the North Pole is getting its only midnight. (Bruce McClure for Earth Sky)

Question: Where on Earth does noon only come once a year?

Answer: At the North and South Poles, and it happens on the summer solstice.

For the Southern Hemisphere, today’s December solstice is their summer solstice. So noontime comes to the South Pole at the December summer solstice.

That’s if we define “day” by successive noons (successive sunsets, successive midnights or successive sunrises). Using that definition, a day lasts a year at the North and South Poles. Sunrise comes every year around the spring equinox, noon at the summer solstice, sunset around the autumnal equinox and midnight at the winter solstice.

Meanwhile, it’s the December winter solstice for the Northern Hemisphere, so it’s midnight at the other end of the world, at the Earth’s North Pole. According to the definition of “day” above, midnight comes only comes once a year at the North and South Poles.

What Time is it at the South Pole? Whatever time you like. (Antarctic Guide)

There’s a strong practical interest in time for travellers to the poles. With the sun providing few clues to the hour, watches and clocks have added significance for human routine. But, again, the location skews the results. The circumference of the earth at the equator is about 40,090 km so each degree of latitude is 111.36 km. Each of the 24 standard time zones occupies 15° of longitude so, at the equator you can travel east or west for 1670 km before you need to change your watch but at the polar circle each time zone occupies only 665 km. So voyagers through the north-east or north-west passage may be changing time zones every day. If the clocks aren’t changed you may soon find the brief hours of darkness occur in the middle of the afternoon.

The way the time zones fall has resulted in the island of South Georgia being one of very few communities to operate on the GMT-2 time zone. Meanwhile, bases on the Antarctic continent where longitude means little during 24 hours of daylight, often run to the time of their home country for convenience.

posted by filthy light thief (14 comments total)

Iceland operates on GMT, which requires a big Trumpian sharpie line to include it. Although Iceland is just below the arctic circle (excluding a few outlying islands) I suspect the reasoning goes something like this: In the summer it's light pretty much all the time and in the winter it's dark pretty much all the time. Spring and fall we're just glad to have any light at all. So we might as well pick a timezone that overlaps with at least some of our business and trading partners. They don't use daylight saving time because for much of the year there's either too much or too little daylight for it to really matter one way or the other.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:22 PM on March 16, 2020 [7 favorites]

It’s 5:00 somewhere, and that somewhere is the North Pole.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:34 PM on March 16, 2020 [10 favorites]

That piercing headache you get when you check your watch at the North Pole? Just a divide by zero error, it'll pass when you look away. Now you don't even want to know what happens at the South Pole...
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:22 PM on March 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

I personally feel like time has lost much of its meaning right now.
posted by SoberHighland at 3:48 PM on March 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Actually a friend wintered over at the south pole, apparently the time used there is NZST/NZDT because that's the time they use at McMurdo and the supply base in Christchurch.

The other interesting fact is what the sun does, it doesn't ever go up and down, it just slowly spirals into the ice as summer ends
posted by mbo at 3:56 PM on March 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Slowly spirals into the ice.
posted by Belostomatidae at 4:01 PM on March 16, 2020 [6 favorites]

♪Time is on my side...♫
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:31 PM on March 16, 2020

It's astounding, time is... fleeting... madness... takes its toll.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:54 PM on March 16, 2020 [9 favorites]

Each mini civilization has adopted its own time zone

We were told earlier today we’ll be sheltering in place for the next few weeks. This feels like an apt description of what life is about to feel like
posted by not_the_water at 6:00 PM on March 16, 2020 [5 favorites]

"Actually a friend wintered over at the south pole..."

That's a rare distinction—not only to have visited the South Pole, but to have wintered there. Looking it up, the "winterovers" number only about 50 people per year.

I'm still impressed by anyone who's been to Antarctica (excepting those tourists I recently learned about).
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:22 AM on March 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

He tells me the first time you winter over you do it for the adventure, the second for the money, and the third and later times because you don't fit in back in the rest of the world.

Also because there's a lot of turnover there's a serious institutional knowledge problem, especially in management
posted by mbo at 2:16 AM on March 17, 2020 [4 favorites]

Up there you use whatever time your air support uses .
Air support comes from Resolute Bay, and they use GMT or Zulu time.

Every camp, expedition or what not used GMT
You talk with Eureka ( a weather station plus airstrip) and i'ts GMT , Thule and it' s GMT, your expeditor and it's GMT.
Alert, well no one talks to Alert.
Though you can be sure they listen.

With 24 hour light it's strange
"What time is it ?"
"Ten O'clock"
" Morning or Evening?"

Actually if the meal was bacon and eggs you'd know it was breakfast.
A cook with a strange sense of humour could really screw with your sense of time.

You could keep a local time, but everyone else is using GMT
Only way to schedule aircraft or share aircraft is to keep a common time.
posted by yyz at 4:31 PM on March 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

US submarines use Zulu time when they are under water since there are no external light cues. Since they run three shifts around the clock, everyone is up for 16 hours (and many crew "hot rack").

The meals are served at 0400Z, 1200Z, 2000Z, but they aren't always differentiated like yyz mentioned in the camps. Instead there is bacon at every meal because "bacon equals morale".
posted by autopilot at 4:45 PM on March 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

There are different ways to do it on subs. I was on 4 over my career, all US west coast-based, which might make a difference.

We had 3 shifts of people rotate 6 hour watches, which meant you were on watch at a different time every rotation. Meals at 06, 12, 18, and 24 at the watch changes so the oncoming watch could eat first, then the offgoing watch. (The 2400 one, "midrats", was not a "real" meal, usually just dinner leftovers or hot dogs and sandwiches, something not too taxing for the cooks.)

We usually maintained local time and changed time zones as we traveled, but a couple of times on high speed transits we just maintained the origin time zone and saved up all the changes for the end. In radio and for the deck log, I believe everything was translated from local to Zulu, but the clocks on the wall were all local time. I don't remember ever transitioning local time to Zulu, but that might make more sense in the Atlantic than it does in the Pacific or IO.
posted by ctmf at 12:05 PM on March 18, 2020 [2 favorites]