Astrakhan would also set clocks one hour forward, on the same day as Zabaykalsk, leaving Moscow Standard Time (UTC +3) to join Samara Time (UTC +4). Not long afterwards, he approved a second time change, this one for Astrakhan province in Russia's southwest. The region would set its clocks one hour forward on March 27, moving from Irkutsk Time (UTC +8) to Yakutsk Time (UTC +9). ![]() The 2016 changes started off in January, with the announcement that President Vladimir Putin had signed off on a time change for the Zabaykalsk territory of Siberia. Russia has a history of time zone changes, with tweaks or major shifts happening every few years since the 1980s, so this wasn't a huge surprise. ![]() The end result was a major redrawing of four different time zone boundaries. Russia dominated the time zone news in 2016, with ten different regions of the country all moving their clocks forward an hour at different times during the year. Last year, there were quite a few of these changes, which you can see by tapping on the maps below (if you're using a touchscreen) or hovering your cursor over the maps (if you're using a mouse).īefore and After: Tap or hover your mouse over the map to see which time zones changed shape during 2016 in eastern Russia (see next map below for changes in western Russia) And while most time zones are defined as being a whole number of hours different from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC a modern version of the outdated "Greenwich Mean Time"), some choose to align their clocks more precisely with the cycles of the sun by shifting them a half hour or even a quarter hour forward or back.ĭepending on a country's laws, redrawing the boundaries between time zones can be as simple as a local assembly voting to reset the area's clocks, or a president signing an order to modify the nation's time zones. Others, especially if their territory is very wide from west to east, divide the country up into several time zones. Many governments choose one time for the whole country, putting themselves unofficially inside a bigger time zone with other countries that set their clocks to the same time. Except for in the open ocean, where time zones are standardized by a loose agreement between fleets and ship operators, the dividing lines are set independently by each country's government, or even by local governments below the national level. But surprisingly, there's actually no international organization that determines time zones. It's an organized way of letting clocks in each part of the world hit noon around the middle of daylight hours, even if it's midnight on the other side of the world. The system of dividing the world into time zones is accepted all around the world, in principle. See the close-ups below for interactive, before-and-after illustrations of time zone changes during 2016.Īrticle and additional graphics work by Evan Centanni For more on changes to countries and borders in 2016, check out our main 2016 year in review article!įree map of world time zones from Wikimedia Commons, up-to-date for the beginning of 2017. This article is a spin-off from our popular yearly review of political geography events.
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