Why the time change leads to more forest fires and crime

However, not everyone agrees whether the six-monthly change makes sense. The justification for the introduction of summer time was that changing the clock could save electricity. The idea is that you only need light later in the summer. However, it is controversial in science whether the time change really saves electricity. In 2016, after analyzing numerous studies on the subject, an Office for Technology Assessment (TAB) study commissioned by the German Bundestag concluded that energy savings were “minimal or negligible at best.”

However, researchers from the Swiss Federal Research and Materials Testing Institute (Empa) came to a different conclusion in January 2023 in a study published in the journal “Environmental Research Letters”. According to the research, the reasons for this are not the lights, but the air conditioning systems. According to the study, up to six percent of the cooling energy in office buildings can be saved by ending work earlier. Although the heat requirement in the morning is on average slightly higher due to working earlier, the savings on cooling clearly outweigh this effect.

There is more scientific agreement about the impact of the six-month time change on sleep. According to sleep research, the change disrupts the so-called circadian rhythm, the body’s natural 24-hour cycle, which regulates important functions such as appetite, mood and sleep.

According to several studies, this increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and suicide. However, a study published in 2022 in the journal ‘Nature’ found that mortality increases in autumn during the first two weeks after the time change, but decreases in spring after the time change.

The lack of sleep, in turn, has even more consequences. A study by American researchers, published in the journal ‘Psychological Science’ in 2016, concluded that on Mondays after the time change, judges impose longer prison sentences on average than on other Mondays. This was collected before the time change in the spring. The researchers reasoned that lack of sleep made the judges stricter.

Studies have also found effects on crime, car accident rates, student performance and even the frequency of wildfires. According to the study published in 2020 in the journal Science of the Total Environment, there are 98 more wildfires in the US each year because the time change means people are lighting fires at times when the risk of wildfires is particularly high. (saw/sda)