Additional Greenland time zone

Paul Eggert eggert at twinsun.com
Sat Sep 29 07:54:39 UTC 2001


> Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2001 17:15:53 -0500
> From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Jesper_N=F8rgaard?= <jnorgard at Prodigy.Net.mx>
> 
> Foreign policy has always been administered by the danish
> government, so that is why I am a bit puzzled that the 'europe' file
> says that Greenland left EU 1985-02-01, but they are still following
> EU time zone rules.

My source for their leaving the EU on that date is the National
Tourist Board of Greenland
<http://www.greenland-guide.dk/gt/visit/intro-04.htm#Greenland%20and%20the%20EEC>

Until the flurry of messages in June I wasn't aware of the extra time zone,
or that Thule / Pituffik does not observe DST.    The latest CIA map
<http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ref/pdf/802801.pdf>
agrees that Greenland has 4 time zones.  The June messages indicate
that they observe EU DST rules, if they observe DST at all.

However, the IATA as recently as last year said that Pituffik does
observe DST, using American rules; see, for example, the 16th page of
<http://www.iata.org/sked/_files/sc106agenda.pdf>.  It could be, as
you say, that the air base itself keeps DST even though the environs
does not; but that would be a little strange.  For lack of better
info, though, I'll assume it stopped keeping DST this year.

I'm not surprised that the IATA missed Danmarkshavn.
<http://www.pol.ac.uk/psmsl/eoss/wp5/eosshb/danmarkshavn> indicates
that Danmarkshavn was at UTC-3, perhaps with DST, from 1992 to 1998.
Intelligence & Security Executive
<http://www.intel-sec.demon.co.uk/tech/timezone/tz_dg.htm> says it's
at UTC-1.  It could well be that it's changed back and forth and we
never knew.  (As far as I can tell, Danmarkshavn is simply a manned
weather station, so all it takes is one guy to change all the clocks
whenever they like.  :-)

The 1997 CIA time zone map shows Danmarkshavn on GMT; the 1995 map as
like Godthab.  (See <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/world.html> for
the maps.)  For lack of better info, I think I'll assume they were
like Godthab before 1996.



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