Dhaka, Oct. 16 -- International timekeeping delegates have agreed to replace the leap second with a leap hour from next year, aiming to reduce the risk of technical failures adjusting to global time, The Guardian reports.

Delegates from 69 countries voted on Thursday at a conference of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Versailles, France, ending decades of debate over how to keep official time aligned with the Earth's rotation, cited per the report.

Under the new system, coordinated universal time (UTC) will be allowed to drift by up to an hour from astronomical time before a correction is made.

The first leap hour is unlikely to be needed for thousands of years.

Dr Setnam Shemar, a principal scientist at the UK's Na...