The leap second will be abolished from the international time standard on May 20 next year. The Verge reported on Thursday that the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) voted to bring forward the abolition date to May 20, 2027, from the previous target of before 2035.

A leap second is a correction method that intermittently adds 1 second to align the time kept by atomic clocks with the Earth’s actual rotation. BIPM members agreed in 2022 to stop using leap seconds before 2035. The change will take effect to coincide with World Metrology Day.

The decision to bring the date forward reflects changes in the Earth’s rotation. That raised the possibility that matching astronomical time and atomic time may require subtracting time rather than adding it. Such a method has never been tried.

That has also intensified concerns that disruptions could hit critical infrastructure that depends on time synchronisation. In the past, outages occurred on several technology platforms including Foursquare, Reddit, LinkedIn and Yelp when leap seconds were added. Meta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have also backed abolishing the leap second.

After the leap second is abolished, a leap hour system will be introduced. Under it, atomic time and astronomical time will be allowed to gradually diverge, and a correction will be made all at once when the total difference reaches 1 hour. Such an adjustment in 1-hour units is expected to be needed only about 3,000 years from now.