You are here: Home » About Earthquakes » Topics » UTC - Coordinated Universal Time

UTC - Coordinated Universal Time

Clock
UTC stands for Coordinated Universal Time.
The time scale is based on the atomic second but corrected every now and again to keep it in approximate sync with the earth's rotation. The corrections show up as the leap seconds put into UTC - usually on New Year's Eve. In the most common usage, the terms GMT and UTC are identical.