# Leap Seconds and GNSS Time Offsets

DevFeed: [Leap Seconds and GNSS Time Offsets](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/leap-seconds-causing-bugs-even-when-they-don-t-happen-36469.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/leapseconds-expose-bugs-even-when-they-dont-happen/>)

Published: 2021-08-03T08:03:10Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Bert Hubert's writings](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/bert-hubert-s-writings.md>)

Topics: [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [navigation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/navigation.md>)

Tags: [gnss](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/gnss.md>), [timing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/timing.md>), [utc](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/utc.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how GNSS systems handle leap seconds. GPS, Galileo, and BeiDou use continuous monotonic timescales and broadcast their offsets from UTC so receivers can derive UTC accurately.

## Source excerpt

Leap seconds are controversial things. Since the Earth does not rotate at a steady rate, over time the Earth could get ahead or behind "atomic time". Whatever solution you propose for this, someone is going to be unhappy. I take no position on what the best thing to do is here, except that one day I would like to do the math on the "great leap second gyroscopes" that we could mount near the poles to steady the Earth's rotation, so we can stop talking about this.