20240401T130000Z

20240401T130000Z is a timestamp written in ISO 8601 format. It represents the moment of 13:00:00 on 1 April 2024 in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The trailing Z indicates Zulu time, a conventional designation for UTC, and the string uses a compact, separator-free form where the date and time are joined by the letter T.

The components are: year 2024, month 04, day 01, followed by T as a separator, then the time 13:00:00, and Z to denote zero offset from UTC. This explicit presentation avoids ambiguity about time zones, which is a common issue in digital records and logs.

Common uses include data interchange, logging, and metadata tagging in software systems. The same moment can be represented in other time zones by converting to the local offset, for example 20240401T090000-04:00 for Eastern Daylight Time, or 20240401T170000+02:00 for Central European Summer Time. ISO 8601 and its RFC 3339 subset are widely adopted in APIs, databases, file naming, and event timestamps to ensure consistent time specification across systems.

Because the Z suffix fixes UTC, 20240401T130000Z remains constant regardless of the reader’s location, making it particularly useful for synchronized events, version control histories, and logging in distributed environments.