How to Calculate Time Differences Between Two Points
If you are preparing to travel to an international destination, one of the things that you will need to do is book accommodations for yourself, which means that you will need to know the time and date of your arrival. Will you be losing time during your flight, or gaining it? Understanding the difference in time zones between two points can also help you avoid a potentially uncomfortable situation when placing an international phone call. Calculate the time difference between two locations by determining the difference between their time zones.
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Instructions
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1
Determine the number of hours that the first time zone is offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). For example, the United States Eastern Time Zone is five hours behind UTC (expressed as "UTC-5"). If you do not know the time zone of this location, browse to the first link in the "Resources" section of this article and click the name of the nearest major city. The offset for that time zone is displayed next to "UTC/GMT Offset."
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2
Determine the UTC offset for the second time zone using the same method as described in Step 1.
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3
Determine whether Daylight Time is observed in either of the time zones that you have selected, and whether Daylight Time is currently in effect. Daylight Time is observed in much of the United States, Europe and Asia. The second "Resources" link describes the beginning and ending dates of Daylight Time--which change each year--and the third link shows which areas of the world observe Daylight Time (as highlighted in red).
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4
Adjust the UTC offset for either or both of your selected time zones if necessary. During Daylight Time, one hour is added to the UTC offset for the time zone because clocks are set ahead one hour. For example, during Daylight Time, the UTC offset for the United States Eastern Time Zone changes from UTC-5 to UTC-4. Note that if you used the first "Resources" link to obtain the UTC offset for either or both time zones, the offset is already adjusted if Daylight Time is in effect in that time zone, and this step should be skipped.
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5
Calculate what the current time would be in each time zone if the current UTC were noon. For example, if the UTC offsets for your first and second time zones are UTC-4 and UTC+2, the current local times would be 8:00 AM and 2:00 PM respectively.
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6
Count the number of hours between the times obtained in Step 5 to determine the difference between the two time zones.
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