Daylight saving time in Brazil

Daylight saving (summer) time zones from October to February (including the Southern Hemisphere summer).
The most recent Brazilian DST started on 15 October 2017.

Daylight saving time (DST) in Brazil (called horário de verão — "summer time" — in Portuguese) starts on the first Sunday of November (beginning in 2018) and ends on the third Sunday of February, with an average duration of 15 weeks. Due to Brazil's low, mostly tropical latitude, many Brazilian states do not have a large seasonal difference in daylight duration. For this reason, not all Brazilian states adopt DST, but the most populous and economically important states do.

DST was first adopted in Brazil in 1931.[1] Initially, it applied to the whole country (with an exception in part of 1963); in 1968, it was stopped, and resumed only in 1985, since then with no interruptions; and from 1988 on, it was applied only in part of the country.[2]

The duration and regional applicability of DST has varied over the years (see Portuguese Wikipedia page for details). Since 2013, DST is followed only in the Southern Region (the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná), the Southeast Region (the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo and Minas Gerais), and the Central-West Region (the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul, and the Federal District).[3]

Formerly, starting and ending dates were variable and determined year by year, but in 2008, a decree (No. 6558 of 9 September 2008) established a permanent rule: DST would start at 00:00 on the third Sunday in October and end at 00:00 on the third Sunday in February, unless the latter fell during Brazilian Carnival: in this case, the end of DST would be postponed by one week. Near-past and near-future years in which the end of DST was scheduled to be postponed are 2012, 2015, 2023, 2026, 2034, and 2037.

On December 15, 2017, President Michel Temer signed a decree changing the start of DST to the first Sunday of November (coinciding with the day that DST ends in the United States and Canada), beginning in 2018. The end of DST was maintained on the third Sunday of February, including the provision for postponement if it coincides with Carnival. Thus, the duration of DST in Brazil will be shortened by two or three weeks. The change was enacted because in the Brazilian election calendar, runoff elections and their vote tallying commonly happen in late October, after the former dates of the switch to DST. This used to cause anomalies and distortions in the electoral process between states with and without DST.[4]

History

Before 2008, there were no fixed start and end dates for summer time, nor which states should or should not follow it; they were decided every year by one or more decrees, sometimes published very close to their start date.[2]

On 8 September 2008, Presidential Decree n. 6.558 established fixed start and end dates and listed the Brazilian federative units that will annually observe daylight saving time.[3] Later, Presidential Decree n. 7.584, of 13 October 2011, added the state of Bahia to the list of DST observing territories.[5] In 2012, the observing states were changed again: Bahia was excluded from daylight saving time, and Tocantins was included.[6] Tocantins stopped observing daylight saving time in 2013.

References

  1. ↑ "Histórico do Horário de Verão" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2007-01-23.
  2. 1 2 "Decretos sobre o Horário de Verão no Brasil" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2007-01-23.
  3. 1 2 "Decreto 6.558 de 2008, sobre o Horário de Verão no Brasil" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2008-11-08.
  4. ↑ Araújo, Carla; Frazão, Felipe (2017-12-15). "Por eleição, Temer reduz horário de verão a partir do ano que vem" [Because of elections, Temer shortens daylight saving time starting next year]. O Estado de S. Paulo (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2017-12-15.
  5. ↑ "Decreto 7.584 de 2011, sobre o Horário de Verão no Brasil" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2011-10-16.
  6. ↑ "Decreto 7.826 de 2012, sobre o Horário de Verão no Brasil" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2012-10-19.

See also

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