2024 is a leap year, but why?

(KTXL) – Let’s ring in a leap year! That’s right, in 2024 he will add one day in February to maintain a common calendar for years to come.

The United States, like much of the world, operates on the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.

Unlike the Julian calendar, which advanced by more than 1,600 years, the Gregorian calendar established more specific and detailed leap rules to prevent date drift.

The extra days are needed because a typical calendar only has exactly 365 days.

According to the National Air and Space Museum, the exact time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 ​​minutes, and 56 seconds.

Nearly 6 hours of extra time is generated each year, which can cause shifts in the calendar seasons.

“Even if we don’t sell, this would be troubling because in the Northern Hemisphere, summer, which was expected to arrive in June, begins in December for the first time in about 700 years,” the National Air and Space Museum wrote. ing.

Therefore, to prevent this date shift, the additional time was grouped into 24-hour blocks, adding one day to the calendar every four years, and the problem was resolved.

However, this simple solution ultimately caused date drift in the Julian calendar because the additional total time did not add up to exactly 24 hours.

According to the National Air and Space Museum, it’s actually closer to 23.262222 hours, prompting Pope Gregory XIII to come up with a more accurate formula.

Leap years currently occur every four years. If the year of the century is exactly divisible by 100 but not by 400, leap years are skipped.

Over the past 400 years, the years 1700, 1800, and 1900 have been skipped as leap years, and the next leap year to be skipped is 2100.