The Deep Dive, Getting to the Bottom of Daylight Saving Time

Crib Sheet for Considering Daylight Savings Time
DST vs. No DST: The intermediate point, a short Memorial to Labor Day DST, might suit both sides.
DST bad: May be true, but time-zone hodgepodge is a key component.
The Sleeper: Without repair, inappropriate time zones repeatedly produce excessive cold winter morning darkness. Overly dark mornings in the United States are entirely caused by unnatural time zones primarily in the Midwest (and points directly south of it) and by excessively long DSTs. Interactive maps show that there is a tendency to wrongly attribute late sunrises in much of the northern half of the U.S. to northerly position when in fact the late sunrises are caused by inappropriate time zones and long DSTs. If symmetric time zones and a short DST (or no DST) are employed, even regions near the Canadian border will have sufficient winter morning sunlight of the kind presently evidenced in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The interactive maps here show the degree to which long DSTs adversely impact morning sunlight. To compare a short Memorial Day DST to the currently practiced Daylight Saving Time, move the cursor to various points on the maps. For these two DSTs you will see percentage of days having sunrises later than 7:00 AM. The maps use sunrises after 7:00 AM as a measuring rod for gauging seasonal morning darkness. Conveniently, this gauge also illustrates closeness to wake-up times, which are often about 7:00 to 7:20 AM. The higher the percentage, the more adverse the impact. Each map color approximately represents a range of similar percentages. At the median, in the United States a fix combining symmetric time zones and a short DST produces a winter season with a modest 2.3 months of sunrises later than 7:00 AM (19% of the year, 69 days), with no county exceeding 135 days (37% of the year, 4.4 months) of late sunrises. This median 2.3 months of reduced early morning sunlight is generally in line with expectations of what winter mornings should look like. By contrast, the current DST and its time zones deliver two and a half times as many dark mornings. The current DST and inappropriate time zones are giving us a median 172 days of excessive morning darkness (47% of year, 5.6 months), peaking at 321 days (88% of year, 10.6 months). We have too many of these gloomy mornings. With a simple fix, we could just as easily have only 2.3 months of moderate winter morning darkness. With Daylight Saving Time you may have felt off kilter in the spring after reluctantly changing clocks and quipping, "Spring Forward, Fall Back." This effect has been magnified by inappropriate time zones, which unnecessarily result in late sunrises for more than 53 million Americans. [In each county, minutes of delay measures the extent to which we are out of sync with time. In each time zone there is an instant (local solar noon) when the sun is directly overhead, and morning and afternoon hours are effectively equally long (the midday). When clock time is also at 12 o'clock noon, position of sun and clocks are in sync, and solar delay, as referred to here, is zero. When, by your watch, it takes longer for the sun to arrive at this midpoint, the delay is a positive. A negative delay indicates that the sun arrives before your watch time indicates. With DST, delay is always positive. At all hours of the day, the delay is present. If you would like to calculate delay on your own. You can do so. In a spreadsheet solar delay as used here equals (ABS(longitude)/15- ABS(time_zone_integer_hours_from_Greenwich)) *60.]

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Out of Sync with Time. The Impact.

As is well known, current morning darkness in many regions endangers children waiting for school buses in pitch black darkness. It impairs cognitive function in school. It harms health via circadian channels. Its economic impact is adverse. The adverse health and economic impact of large positive solar delays is often described as the "Western Edge Effect." This effect plays a role in shortened sleep, increased body weight, breast cancer, diabetes, heart disease, seasonal affective disorder, sleep disturbances, and mental & cognitive problems. These effects can persist long beyond when clocks were changed in the spring. Small or negative delays are generally considered beneficial. The state of Maine, for example, at its northernmost border with Canada has a negative solar delay (-26 minutes). This negative delay produces only 20% of sunrises after 7:00 AM. Especially in view of circadian influence, "delay" could just as easily be called a harm index, where high values harm health and negative values promote health. Do you know your delay? You can find your county's delay in the map Table. If you live in an above dark red map region, it will be between 92 and 118 minutes during DST — on average 101 minutes (62% to 88% dark mornings). Circadian impact is large. "More than 50% of all gene expression is under circadian control," as Michael Rosbash pointed out in his 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine Lecture. In the early morning, circadian clocks throughout the body are set in response to the sun’s light/dark cycle. Folks who wear fitness devices and attend to their health in other ways often do so because they want optimum health. In the face of high delays, will they get it? Will those in the dark red map regions above be at the top of their game? By a wide margin, as measured by minutes of delay, the long current DST and lopsided time-zones have put us out of sync with time. In the US, 280 million people are out of sync for 8 months of the year; 53 million people, for 100% of the year.

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Cropping the Wings

Eastern positions within a time zone increase seasonal morning sunlight; western positions decrease it. For example, when you move the cursor due west from Washington, DC to Terre Haute in Vigo County, IN, you go from 38% of early mornings being dark in Washington, to 70% being dark in Vigo. Washington and cities on the East Coast typically have far fewer dark mornings than experienced on the western edges of time zones. It is generally unknown that with a time-zone fix alone, Vigo would have had only 20% dark mornings – far better than the vast majority of counties on the East Coast and better than the 24% in Santa Barbara, CA. Similarly, it is generally unknown that if instead of the current DST, a short Memorial Day DST had also been employed, only 13% of mornings would have been dark. Only three counties on the East Coast can claim such an honor. For Vigo to get there will require a two-step process: 1) repair time zone, and 2) trim the DST’s wings to a short period. Only with the interactive maps were we able to see this. [Spreadsheet notes: Temperature, Vigo County, IN. US Climate Normals 2020: US Hourly Climate Normals (2006-2020).] As shown in this graph, quickly rising morning temperatures in Vigo come between 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM with peaks occurring by about 4:00 PM. An improper time zone or a DST of any length makes mornings darker and colder. When DST induced darkness and coolness is confined to counteracting a short period which already has abundant sunlight and high temperature, the DST appears to be passably harmless. But when, as with the current DST, this darkness and coolness is widely spread out over already cooler and darker months, the percentage of dark and cold mornings escalate. The wings do the mischief.

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DST Choices

As DSTs become increasing longer, the percentage of dark mornings increase. Options Summary: #1 No DST, Permanent Standard Time; #2 Memorial to Labor Day DST, May 20 - Sep 9, 113 Days, 31% of year; #3 1966 to 2006 DST, Apr 24 - Oct 30, 190 Days, 52% of year; #4 Current DST, Mar 10 - Nov 3, 239 Days, 65% of year; #5 Proposed Permanent DST, 100% of year. The Current DST, option #4, is the dominant time in the US. It exists for 65% of the year. It contains 55 more Spring days (March to May) and 71 more Fall days (September to November) than the summertime Memorial Day DST. These 126 additional days of Daylight Savings Time raise warning flags, given that they all occur during school months, when early morning cognition and school bus safety are issues. By avoiding harmful aspects of long DSTs and by having a low percentage of sunrises after 7:00 AM, the Memorial to Labor Day DST is a winner. A summer celebration, not a year-long anathema.

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Fixing It

DST fix: Arizona and Hawaii have rejected Daylight Saving Time. 15 U.S. Code § 260a allows any state to go on Permanent Standard Time within its borders without congressional action. Eliminating Daylight Saving Time reduces delay by 60 minutes. This can be readily accomplished in any state without congressional action. To change a DST requires congressional action. Thus, to choose a short Memorial to Labor Day DST requires congressional action. In most cases these two options yield about the same percentage of sunrises after 7:00 AM. The fix can employ either a short DST or permanent standard time. Scholarly studies have not yet addressed attributes of a short Memorial to Labor Day DST.

Wikipedia indicates that:
Permanent standard time is considered by circadian health researchers and safety experts worldwide to be the best option for health, safety, schools, and economy, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, National Sleep Foundation, American College of Chest Physicians, National Safety Council, American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Canadian Sleep Society, World Sleep Society, Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, and several state sleep societies. Permanent standard time is supported by advocates for school children, including the National PTA, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, National School Boards Association, and Start School Later. They cite both the health benefits of circadian alignment, and the safety advantages regarding morning commutes.

Time Zone fix: As shown in the map, time in the United States is a hodgepodge without uniformity or order. The old bedrocks on which US time stands (to "promote the adoption and observance of uniform time within the standard time zones"; 1918, 1919, 1966), now 58 to 106 years old, have not delivered an orderly time. Time Zones are defined at county levels named in the map's Table. There are two ways an area can be moved from one time zone to another: by Federal statute or by Secretary of Transportation regulation. The dark red regions on the above map, with long solar delays, are caused by ancient, time-zone choices for western-edge counties. Changing time zones that now apply would place these counties in an enviable position — a move from the darkest above map color to the lightest, a 60 minute reduction in delay. Quick Local fix: For DST rejectionists, experiments to maintain sync with solar time by setting clocks and watches within a household to local solar time and using DST time elsewhere are occasionally possible. When stuck in untenable circumstances this option can be useful, if not pleasant. Year-round lunch at solar noon preserves the natural unfolding of the season and of the day — the halfway point of daylight hours. With evidence of commitment by at least some people to experiment and to maintain sync, there is more practical knowledge about the impact of different options and a greater incentive for legislative bodies to change.

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Time Zone Peril

Especially in the northern US, waking up an hour earlier than necessary because of time zone hits hard on cold winter mornings. While DST gets the press and public attention, it is 53 million Americans in 900 counties that continuously face additional 60 minute delays resulting from improper time zones. Applying an inappropriate time zone at the county level is more pernicious than a DST. Like a DST it increases delay by 60 minutes, but it is unremitting — continuously active for 365 days of the year. By contrast, the length of a DST can be controlled. Longitude and time march in lockstep, 4 minutes for each degree of longitude. Time zones began as useful approximations to replace calculating time based on the sun‘s position at each location. Though they began in this honest fashion, they have since been manipulated far from this sensible starting point. In a symmetric one-hour time zone, solar delays are limited to a +30 to -30 minute range. In practice, US time zones are profoundly lopsided. They strongly favor the western edge. At its most extreme points, the Eastern time-zone range of solar delays is approximately +57 to -29 minutes; Central Time, +58 to -20; Mountain Time, +50 to -17; and Pacific Time, +16 to -20. The zones with high positive delays endanger children who must wait for school buses in cold morning darkness and cause discomfort for those of us who are compelled to get up one hour earlier on cold, dark winter mornings. A time-zone fix is imperative. Eastern and Central Time zones have massively shifted westward since they were initially drawn in 1883 — about 378 miles from an appropriate point. Yet, as the Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports, in the past 20 years only 15 counties have changed. This 378 miles is not pulled out of thin air. At the median latitude for US counties (38.3°), each minute of delay in a time zone translates to 13.5 miles. At a 58 minute delay, the time zone is 28 minutes longer than the appropriate 30-minute maximum. Thus, the 378 miles [= 28*13.5].

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Repair your local time zone & no need to change clocks the following spring.

Now, consider the time zone fix. The first column in the Table below is the same as in the first map. However, when a time zone is changed, results from the fix are shown separately in black in a second column. The second column is empty when no change occurs. This map shows pure one-hour time zones, solar delays falling within a +30 to -30 minute range. Eastern time begins at longitude -67.5°; Central, at -82.5°; Mountain at -97.5°; and Pacific at -112.5°. These one-hour, time-zone boundary lines are shown on the map. Fixing time zones in this orderly fashion produces the highly favorable outcomes shown in the map's Table. To eliminate high delays, 479 counties in the Eastern time zone, 370 in the Central, and 47 in the Mountain need to change. In this group of counties when we change time zone and select the Memorial Day DST instead of the Current DST, we go from an average 64% of sunrises after 7:00 AM to 4%. On average, our latest sunrise goes from 8:04 AM to 6:54 AM. By these changes in DST and time zone, we reliably start our mornings with adequate sunlight. In almost 900 US counties, we did not and could not do this before, because we were locked into an inappropriate DST and an inappropriate time zone. When these time-zone changes are applied at the instant a DST begins in the spring of the year, these counties (53 million people) will not need, at that time, to change clocks. They will seamlessly transition into their new time.

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Memorial to Labor Day DST: the Unofficial Start and End of Summer

Prior to the 1966 Uniform Time Act, Iowa and Minnesota practiced a Memorial to Labor Day DST. The Congressional Record shows that as late as 1985 the American Farm Bureau policy was, "We support legislation limiting daylight saving time to the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day." And, "We continue to support the right of a state to exempt itself from daylight saving time." In view of the currently long DST, the old Farm Bureau position now appears especially appropriate. Let’s look at median western-edge times prior to applying a long or short DST. In the Table, “Proximity” is sunrise relative to a 7:00 AM wake-up. For a sunrise to stay clear of a 7:00 AM wake-up, proximity at the start of the DST must exceed 60 minutes. The Memorial to Labor Day DST is safely wide of this mark. Its proximity is at 1:45 hours. Sunrise is at 5:51 AM. Mornings are long, 7:11 hours. By this time of the year morning sunlight is changing very slowly. It will take 32 days for sunrise to occur 8 minutes earlier. This DST provides plenty of early morning sunlight for circadian entrainment. To initiate a DST on May 20 will reduce morning hours by only a modest 14%. Many of those hours occur when we are fast asleep. Physiologically, the transition to this short DST would normally seem to be comparatively mild. While we sleep, it makes good use of some of the abundant May 20th very early morning hours. We still have 6:11 morning hours of sunlight remaining after one hour is taken away for the Memorial Day DST. Similarly after exiting it in September, 6:20 hours of morning sunlight remain. With an eye toward practicality, it begins a week before and ends the week after heavy holiday transportation demands. Perhaps paramount for many, it happily blends with the tradition of Memorial Day being the unofficial start of summer and Labor Day being the unofficial end of summer — a bona fide summertime DST. An opportunity to catch the wave at the instant of high retail sales, high resilience/low death rates, a cresting of sunlight hours, and a celebration of summer.

# Day	Date	Event	Sunrise	Morning Hours	DST % of Hours	Proximity
1	Jan 1	New Year	7:46 AM	4:46	21%	-0:46
69	Mar 10	Current DST Start	6:48 AM	5:51	17%	0:11
140	May 20	Memorial Day	5:14 AM	7:11	14%	1:45
172	Jun 21	Longest Morning	5:06 AM	7:25	13%	1:53
252	Sep 9	Labor Day	6:06 AM	6:20	16%	0:53
308	Nov 4	Current DST End	6:58 AM	5:15	19%	0:02

Above based on NOAA sunrise spreadsheet, cited below, where a median latitude is employed at a conventional western edge border (latitude 38.3, longitude -82.5, time zone -5, solar delay 30 minutes, local solar times prior to DST adjustments). By contrast, the current DST March 10 start date fails on all points. Sunrise, late. Morning sunlight hours, short. Morning sunlight, changing rapidly. Proximity to sleep hours, harmful. High seasonal mortality. No social buoyancy. DST should not be employed as a blunt instrument. If it is to be used at all, it must be with surgical precision. Because of the 1966 Uniform Time Act and long DSTs, we never experienced in our lifetimes the natural unfolding of spring. With the prior gradual increase of sunlight, we safely and pleasurably could adapt over a period of about 55 days to 60-minute natural increases in morning sunlight. Long DSTs instead gave us spring seasons with an adjust (adapt to a 60-minute increase of morning sunlight over about 55 days), reverse (in one day take away those 60 minutes of morning sunlight), adjust again (try to recover) cycle. It is no wonder that changing clocks became odious.

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A DST Waste, 122 Days: Oct, Mar, Apr, Sep.

Glowing claims of DST economic advantage are routinely made. Stats don't match. The frequent claim that the current DST drives retail sales is misleading. At best the influence is small. October, March, April, and September are some of the worst retail months … a 122 day DST waste. [As for a possible positive point, the retail oscillation that might prove useful is to begin a DST at its rare peak on or about May 20.] Yes, there are seasonal patterns, but month to month deviations are commonly small without a pattern sufficient to claim that DST improved the economy. We should not be surprised. Retail sales are a mere tip of an iceberg.

Ranked Retail Sales Relative to Average Month
Month	Rank	1993-2019	DST #3, 1993-2006	DST #4, 2007-2019
Dec	1	24.5%	28.4%	19.9%
Nov	2	3.6%	3.7%	3.5%
May	3	2.7%	1.8%	3.7%
Aug	4	1.5%	1.2%	1.8%
Jun	5	-0.6%	-1.1%	0.0%
Oct	6	-0.8%	-0.8%	-1.0%
Jul	7	-1.0%	-1.7%	-0.1%
Mar	8	-1.8%	-3.3%	-1.0%
Apr	9	-2.9%	-3.2%	-2.6%
Sep	10	-4.5%	-4.4%	-4.6%
Jan	11	-10.3%	-11.0%	-9.5%
Feb	12	-12.5%	-13.2%	-11.5%
.
Oct, Mar, Apr, Sep		-2.5%	-2.9%	-2.3%
Aug, Jun, Jul		0.0%	-0.5%	0.6%

[Spreadsheet notes: SRS1 Cubic Spline converts centered monthly retail sales to daily rates.] The US economy is huge. Most economic activity occurs entirely outside of the retail sector: 90% of nonfarm employees produce 94% of the economy (GDP). Via circadian channels, appropriate exposure to early morning sunlight influences health, mood, and cognitive abilities. A large portion of productive work occurs during morning hours. A failure to take advantage of morning alertness is a foregone opportunity. Alertness and quality of decision making during these hours are crucial for economic success. To compromise morning hours of sunlight by indiscriminately taking one hour from them, and thereby creating an additional hour of morning darkness, comes at a large expense to the economy. [Spreadsheet notes: In first graph, repaired time zones are shown at minutes of delay existing prior to the fix. In second graph, 3093 counties, Current DST and time zones. Based on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Pre-COVID database, Social Vulnerability Index 2018. Total_Personal_Income= Per_Capita_Personal_Income *Population. Data sorted to Percent_Days. Index= Centered_rolling_200_point_median/ column_median* 100. Index smoothed on 30 point centered moving average. Dark mornings are defined as those with sunrises after 7:00 AM. Not required here but used elsewhere: Proper Delay= MOD(ABS(longitude) *4+30,60)-30.] In the first graph, percentage of days of early morning darkness is closely tied to delay and exacerbated by DST length. In the second graph, peak economic performance is associated with days of morning darkness. The approximate breaking point for success occurs at 51% of early mornings being dark. Before that point great successes occur. After it, no bursts of favorable economic tendencies appear. At high doses of gloomy mornings, median index values in excess of 100 rarely happen. Peaks at 30%, 38%, and 46%. Red flag at 51%. At higher than 51% dark early mornings, economic measures typically range from substandard to punishingly destructive. Areas to the right of the improper time zone marker are especially hard hit. Population data shows a decline with a high percentage of gloomy mornings — perhaps nice places avoided because by fiat their mornings were made less attractive than in the majority of the nation. It is a surprise that a rarely viewed item such as early morning darkness could have broad economic influence. Entire regions appear to be harmed by the fiction that manipulating DST and time zones far from their natural conditions is beneficial when, in fact, the data suggests that the economic impact is devastating.

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DST and Seasonal Mortality

It makes a difference when a DST starts. It never should begin when people are most vulnerable. In the first graph below, the current DST begins when death rates are 5.9% higher than the average. In a more suitable fashion, a Memorial to Labor Day DST begins when death rates are 3.9% lower than the average. [Spreadsheet notes: Japan and US monthly death data, NOAA daylight spreadsheet cited below, SRS1 Cubic Spline to convert centered monthly death rates to daily rates, max morning sunlight hours scaled to max USA and max Japan death rates. A caution: Differences in amplitude do not imply differences in annual death rates or longevity. Amplitudes reflect only relative changes during a year, within a single country, during particular periods.] As shown in the graphs, throughout the year death rates in the US and Japan move in the same pattern as hours of sunlight. Relative to the average, in seasons with more hours of sunlight there is a reduced tendency to die. Subsequent to the shortest sunlight of the year (the winter solstice, December 21), death rates in the US and Japan lag sunlight by 28 days. Subsequent to the longest sunlight of the year (the summer solstice, June 20), the lag is an additional 15 days (a total 43-day lag during the summer half of the year). It appears that, directly or indirectly, the lags correspond to the cumulative impact of hours of sunlight exposure and that the additional lag in the summer reflects a protective effect of sunlight. The dashed lines are positioned to illustrate the exact outcome of these lags. Seasonal death rates reflect healthiness and resilience. You would have to struggle to find a plausible date that is significantly less healthy than the current DST’s March 10 to start a DST. In the second graph (in part an inverse of the prior graph), we see that a Memorial Day DST beginning on May 20 would start at a point 10.3% more resilient than the current DST’s March 10. Japan. It does not employ a DST. It operates on permanent standard time. For life expectancy, it frequently is the top ranked nation in the world. Its latitude (36.2°) is close to the US latitude (37.1°), thus similar sunlight. Japan’s mortality curve is instructive. Each year it goes through four distinct stages of death rate changes, approximately:

#1 A substantially linear reduction of death rates in the spring, 28-Jan to 14-Jun (138 days);
#2 A summer period with only slight changes in death rates, 14-Jun to 17-Sep (95 days);
#3 A linear increase of increasing death rates in the fall, 17-Sep to 11-Jan (116 days);
#4 a winter peak of death rates, 11-Jan to 28-Jan (17 days). Closely matching the sunlight pattern, Japan's dominant features are its two pronounced linear wings on either side of a largely inactive summer period. Japan is distinguished by in middle June reaching a narrow band of exceptionally low death rates beyond which increases in sunlight hours apparently become ineffectual. These shapes are presumably near optimum for a healthy nation. The extent of seasonal variation in death rates correlates with latitude with greatest amplitude at mid-latitude around 35 degrees, as in the United States and Japan. Seasonality of mortality can be accounted for at high correlation levels [in 13 nations: an average R² of 0.922 for cardiovascular disease, 0.884 for all-cause mortality, and 0.829 for deaths excluding cancer and CVD]. Paradoxically, northernmost countries, such as Finland and Canada, which have coldest climates, often display less seasonality than countries at less extreme latitudes, serving as a forewarning that causes remain uncertain. Regardless, we can see the seasonal death rates we must address, and do so — even when unsure about cause. I am not a medical professional. Do not construe any of this as medical advice. For that consult a healthcare professional. Here we are discussing data and DST decision-making. Hopefully it contributes to the discussion.

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Side-by-Side Comparison

In these side-by-side interactive maps, the areas that require fixing are to the left of the symmetric time-zone borders. The incentive to repair comes from moving from the most harmful conditions to the most advantageous positions, which are shown in light colors on the map at the right. The "After" shows that throughout the United States, up to the Canadian border, you can have ample early morning sunlight for appropriate circadian entrainment. The "After" map at the right shows the time zone fix. When we also go a step further and employ either permanent standard time or the Memorial Day DST, the five bands of map colors respectively hover around 0%, 12%, 20%, 24%, and 29% morning darkness, typically peaking at 21%, 25%, 29%, 33%, and 37%. Even the dark "After" map colors are a cure. With the fix, they show only modest morning darkness.

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New Seasons of Morning Darkness, a summary of options

Before and After Repairing Time Zones: Percent, Days, and Months of Sunrises Later Than 7:00 AM
.
Before Repairing Time Zones
Event	Median Percent	Days	Months	Ratio		Max Percent	Days	Months	Ratio
No DST	27%	99	3.2	1.4		46%	168	5.5	1.2
Memorial to Labor Day DST	28%	102	3.4	1.5		62%	226	7.4	1.7
1966 to 2006 DST	39%	142	4.7	2.1		79%	288	9.5	2.1
Current DST	47%	172	5.6	2.5		88%	321	10.6	2.4
Permanent DST	54%	197	6.5	2.8		88%	321	10.6	2.4
After Repairing Time Zones
No DST	19%	69	2.3	1.0		37%	135	4.4	1.0
Memorial to Labor Day DST	19%	69	2.3	1.0		37%	135	4.4	1.0
1966 to 2006 DST	26%	95	3.1	1.4		49%	179	5.9	1.3
Current DST	31%	113	3.7	1.6		59%	215	7.1	1.6
Permanent DST	46%	168	5.5	2.4		68%	248	8.2	1.8

Long DSTs and inappropriate time zones have artificially created seasons of early morning darkness that would not normally exist. Correcting that, a time zone plus Memorial Day fix puts an absolute cap on morning darkness. No county whatsoever experiences more than 37% of sunrises after 7:00 AM. This is fundamentally different from the current DST, which at the median can barely limit late sunrises to 47% of the year. With the fix we have, at the median, only 69 days of sunrises after 7:00 AM. We are physiologically well adapted for a 69-day season of winter morning darkness. It is identical to conditions that existed before DST was invented. The vastly longer dark seasons now imposed on us are unnecessary. The current DST and its accompanying time zones, with its 172 days of morning darkness, are pointless. Advanced societies do not profit from 172 days of morning darkness. These dark mornings are burdens 2.5x greater than we would normally experience. Especially for schools, they have created school bus and cognitive problems that can be fixed only by a change in DST and accompanying time zones.

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Abolish DST

Google Scholar: Medical Group Position Statements on Daylight Saving Time
Daylight Saving Is a Trap
Save Standard Time
Google Scholar: Topic, Adverse DST Effects For Adolescents
Kids on way to school endangered by morning darkness
School Bus Stops: Waiting in the Dark
DST Analysis

Health Links

How permanent standard time could save lives, explained by a sleep expert
How daylight saving time poses a host of health concerns, according to a neurologist
Daylight Saving Time and Your Health Plus, Steps to Saving Zzz's
Breast cancer risk higher in western parts of time zones

DST Interactive Maps in the News

NewsNet: Interactive Maps Put a New Perspective on Daylight Savings Time
New York Tech: Five DST Looks To Reimagine Our Clock-Changing Habits
Digital Journal: Surprise in Cheboygan, a DST that Increases Morning Sunlight
Andy Woodruff: Where to hate daylight saving time and where to love it
Bloomberg: Where Mornings Would Get Darker Under Permanent Daylight Saving Time
Washington Post: Brighter winter evenings would come at the expense of darker mornings.
Download NOAA Sunrise .xls Spreadsheet

With cartography, programming, publicly available databases, techniques mentioned in spreadsheet notes and links, the above was created.
Creative commons license CC BY-ND. Courtesy of I. Jeanes. Developed by DSTmap.com.