Local Time or UTC?

In the past, anyone in Switzerland who felt an earthquake and looked at the clock might well have been confused to find a quite different time quoted at the website of the Swiss Seismological Service. In winter, there was a one-hour difference from local time, which became two hours in summer, as the website has previously only quoted times in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). That standard time format helps seismologists and other scientists to investigate occurrences regardless of the relevant time zone.

To eliminate further confusion, our website now quotes the times of all earthquakes occurring in Switzerland and adjacent countries in both local time and UTC. Times of earthquakes in other countries continue to be listed only in UTC, for ease of international comparison.