A leap year in the Ethiopian calendar occurs every 4 years when an extra day is added to the last month of the year.
Adds Leap Day
The Ethiopiancalendar consists of 13 months, where the first 12 months have 30 days each. The 13th month has 5 days in a common year and 6 days in a leap year.
It is a solar calendar, based on the solar(tropical)year. The Ethiopian calendar's historical roots are the same calculations that lie behind today's Gregoriancalendar and its predecessor, the Juliancalendar.
Why Add Leap Years?
Leap years are needed to keep the calendar in alignment with Earth's revolutions around the Sun.
It takes Earth approximately 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds (365.242189 days) to circle once around the Sun. This is called a tropicalyear (solaryear) which is usually measured from one Marchequinox to the next.
Every 4 Years Is Too Often
Like in the Julian calendar, a leap year in the Ethiopian calendar is added every 4 years, without exception. However, this is too often compared to the length of a solar year.
Because of this, both the Julian and the Ethiopian calendar are several days out of sync with the fixed dates for astronomicalseasons such as equinoxes and solstices. This is the reason why the Gregorian calendar eventually replaced the Julian system to become the world's standard civil calendar.
The Ethiopiancalendar starts the year on what corresponds to September11/12 in the Gregorian calendar.
Since the beginning of March1900 until the end of February2100, the Ethiopian leap years have coincided with leapyears in the Gregorian calendar.
The more advanced leapyear formula makes the Gregorian calendar far more accurate than the Ethiopian calendar. However, it is notperfect either. Compared to the tropical year, it is off by 1 day every 3236 years.
Topics: Leap Year
