Submitted by chris on
Today (March 20, 2022) at 8:33AM Pacific Time, the Earth passed the second cardinal point in its orbit - exactly 1/4 of its journey around the Sun. This is meaningful astronomically because it is the exact moment at which the Earth's tilt is neither towards nor away from the Sun. Consequently, both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres receive exactly the same amount of light and the Sun appears to be directly overhead at the Equator. Hence, the term "equinox" - or "equal day/night". On this day, daytime and nighttime are very nearly equal (12 hours), sunrise is at roughly 6AM and sunset is at roughly 6PM, local solar time.
Which brings me to this wacky construction we've been living with for awhile called "daylight savings time". For various social and economic reasons lost in history, we have traditionally set our clocks "ahead" of solar time during the northern summer months, so that on this day the sun rose at roughly 7am and will set at roughly 7pm, daylight savings time. This means that local solar noon during DST - the time at which the sun appears highest in the sky and roughly south appears on our DST clocks as 1PM. It also means that it isn't until 1PM on our clocks that half the day's daylight hours have passed.
I applaud the growing movement to abolish this semi-annual twisting of our clocks between standard time and daylight time. However, I'm aghast that the decision seems headed towards making daylight time the standard! This would commit the entire country to be permanently 1 hour out-of-step with astronomical reality. We may like it fine during the summer months, when DST has always been favored, but the winter months would be very challenging, with the sun not rising before 8am in many parts of the country. No, if we're going to ditch DST, we need to ditch it permanently - not make it the standard. With standard time, our clocks will consistently track the daily solar cycle year-round, with sunrises and sunsets at "reasonable" times throughout the year.
