Time in Antarctica


sits on every line of longitude, due to the South Pole being situated on the continent. Theoretically, Antarctica would be located in all time zones; however, areas south of the Antarctic Circle experience extreme day-night cycles near the times of the June and December solstices, making it difficult to determine which time zone would be appropriate. For practical purposes time zones are usually based on territorial claims; however, many stations use the time of the country they are owned by or the time zone of their supply base. Nearby stations can have different time zones, due to their belonging to different countries. Many areas have no time zone since nothing is decided and there are not even any temporary settlements that have any clocks. They are simply labeled with UTC time.

TZ database

The file zone.tab of the tz database contains the following zones, columns marked with * contain data from the file zone.tab. Only permanently inhabited stations are tracked by the tz database staff. Some summer only stations with different time might exist.
Country code*Coordinates*Zone name*Comment*UTC offset
standard time		DSTArea covered
Palmer Land---
Graham Land---
Queen Maud Land---
Queen Maud Land, Enderby Land---
Mac. Robertson Land---
Inland Antarctica, Queen Maud Land---
Wilkes Land---
Wilkes Land---
Adélie Land, Victoria Land---
Macquarie Island---
Ross Dependency---
South Pole---

The coordinates are latitude and longitude, and for each there are 2 or 3 digits for degrees, 2 digits for minutes and for some 2 digits for seconds.

Daylight saving time

For the most part, daylight saving time is not observed in Antarctica because 95 percent of the continent is located south of the Antarctic Circle and the midnight sun phenomenon renders the use of DST unnecessary, and it would further complicate communication with the claimant countries in the northern hemisphere.
However, a few regions such as the Ross Dependency and, formerly, Palmer Land, observe the time and use of DST of the countries they are supplied from, New Zealand and Chile, respectively. The areas have DST during the southern summer, when there is the northern winter, including January.