Daylight Saving Time (DST)

Context:

The United States Senate, recently has unanimously passed a law making daylight saving time (DST) permanent, scrapping the biannual practice of putting clocks forward and back coinciding with the arrival and departure of winter.

What is Daylight Saving Time?

• Daylight saving time (DST), also known as summer time (United Kingdom, European Union, and some other countries)
• Countries in the Northern Hemisphere, clocks are usually set ahead one hour in late March or in April and are set back one hour in late September or in October.
• The practice was first suggested by Benjamin Franklin in 1784. 
• In 1907 an Englishman, William Willett, campaigned for setting the clock ahead by 80 minutes in four moves of 20 minutes each during April and the reverse in September. 
• Several countries, including Australia, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, adopted summer DST during World War I to conserve fuel by reducing the need for artificial light.
• A group of Canadians in Port Arthur (Ontario) were the first to adopt the practice on July 1, 1908, setting their clocks an hour ahead.
• Many studies have listed out the disadvantages of DST, as one hour of lost sleep in the US, increases the fatal crash rate by 5.4% to 7.6% for six days following the transition.
• Other disadvantages are: a higher rate of workplace injuries after the switch, leading to lost days of work; a slight drop in stock market performance; health problems as a result of disruption of the circadian rhythm (body clock) and even longer sentences ordered by judges deprived of sleep.
• Once the USA’s Sunshine Protection Act is passed, it will come into effect in November 2023. 
• The practice of turning clocks back by an hour to standard time every November will stop — and DST, which now starts in March, will be in effect all year round.
• DST is currently followed by some 70 countries twice a year.

How relevant is DST now?

• A century ago, when DST was introduced, more daylight did mean less use of artificial light.
• But modern society uses so much energy-consuming appliances all day long that the amount of energy saved is negligible.
• Among the biggest disadvantages is the disruption of the body clock or circadian rhythm.

What are the countries that want DST gone?

• In March 2020, the European Union moved to scrap the custom of DST, with the European Parliament voting 410-192.
• After 2021, EU member states will choose between “permanent summertime” or “permanent wintertime”.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)-

• Greenwich Mean Time is the yearly average (or ‘mean’) of the time each day when the Sun crosses the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, London. 
• At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, including being calculated from noon.
• The term ‘GMT’ is also used as one of the names for the time zone Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)+00:00.
• Essentially, mean time is clock time rather than solar (astronomical) time. 
• Solar time varies throughout the year, as the time interval between the Sun crossing a set meridian line changes.
• But each day measured by a clock has the same length, equal to the average (mean) length of a solar day. 
• It’s a way of standardizing and regularizing time.

Indian Standard Time (IST)-

• IST is the time zone observed throughout India, with a time offset of UTC+05:30 which means, IST is 5:30 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). 
• This time zone is in use during standard time in Asia. 
• India Standard Time is a half-hour time zone. 
• Its local time differs by 30 minutes instead of the normal whole hour.
• India does not observe daylight saving time or other seasonal adjustments. 
• In military and aviation time IST is designated E* (“Echo-Star”) and is indicated as Asia/Kolkata in the IANA time zone database.

Source: Indian Express

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