Exact date sun will set before 5pm after clocks go back on Sunday

Exact date sun will set before 5pm after clocks go back on Sunday The clocks will go back this weekend as the UK returns to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) The clocks will turn back this weekend as the UK switches from British Summer Time (BST) back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). At 2am on Sunday, October 25, the clocks will roll back by one hour to 1am – which could mean a welcome extra hour in bed for many. The UK will then remain on GMT until the clocks "spring forward" once more at the end of March. Following Sunday's change, mornings will be brighter, although evenings will draw in much earlier. The longest day of the year in terms of daylight, marking the official start of summer, fell on June 21, with daylight hours gradually shortening ever since. This will continue until Sunday, December 21, when the winter solstice arrives, bringing with it the shortest day of the year. When will the sun set before 5pm? Currently in London, the sun begins to set just before 6pm, though as autumn deepens, sunset times will continue to creep earlier. For those wondering exactly when sunsets will fall before 5pm, Londoners will experience this on October 25, the very day the clocks go back. On that day, the sun is expected to set at approximately 4.46pm. Sunset times differ across various parts of the UK, so on October 25, residents of Lowestoft, one of the most easterly points in the country, will witness the sun dropping below the horizon at around 4.37pm. In County Fermanagh, amongst the most westerly areas of Northern Ireland, a pre-5pm sunset won't arrive until October 30. Regardless of your location across the UK, the evenings are unmistakably getting darker earlier. On the positive side, this does mean that sunrise will occur at approximately 7am, instead of 8am, after the clocks have gone back. Why do the clocks change? Daylight saving, or summer time, is a system designed to maximise the extended daylight hours during summer in the northern hemisphere. Subsequently, when summer ends the clocks are adjusted back to return to GMT. According to Royal Museums Greenwich, Benjamin Franklin first proposed the concept of daylight saving time back in 1784. Later, in 1907, Englishman William Willett launched a campaign to move clocks forward in spring and summer and set them back in autumn. His somewhat complex proposal was to advance clocks by 80 minutes, through four separate increments of 20 minutes each. In 1908 the House of Commons rejected a Bill to move the clocks forward by one hour during the spring and summer months. Subsequently in 1916 the Summer Time Act was passed, establishing that for a specified period during the year legal time should be one hour ahead of GMT. Double summer time (GMT + 2 hours) was implemented during the Second World War.