Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
is located at a longitude that would naturally put it in the
UTC−04:00 or
UTC−05:00 time zone
A time zone is an area which observes a uniform standard time for legal, Commerce, commercial and social purposes. Time zones tend to follow the boundaries between Country, countries and their Administrative division, subdivisions instead of ...
; however, it actually uses the
UTC−03:00 time zone. Argentina determines whether to change clocks in observation of
daylight saving time on a year-by-year basis, and individual
provinces may opt out of the
federal decision. At present, Argentina does not change clocks.
The
Argentine Hydrographic Service maintains the official national time.
History
The first official standardization of time in Argentina took place on 31 October 1894, with establishment of
UTC−04:00 as the nation's
standard time
Standard time is the synchronization of clocks within a geographical region to a single time standard, rather than a local mean time standard. Generally, standard time agrees with the local mean time at some meridian that passes through the r ...
.
From 1920 to 1969, the official time switched biannually between UTC−04:00 as standard time in winter and
UTC−03:00 as daylight saving time in summer.
From 1974 to 1993, clocks advanced again, such that the official time switched biannually between UTC−03:00 as winter DST and
UTC−02:00 as summer double DST.
In 1993, the national time was fixed at
UTC−03:00, called Argentina Time (ART; ).
In 2007 and 2008, biannual switching between UTC–3:00 (winter DST) and UTC–2:00 (summer DST) resumed; in 2009, this was replaced again with year-round UTC–3:00 (permanent DST).
IANA time zone database
In the file
zone.tab of the
IANA time zone database Argentina has the following zones:
# America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires – Buenos Aires (BA, CF)
# America/Argentina/Cordoba – most locations (CD, CC, CR, ER, FO, MN, SF)
# America/Argentina/Salta (SA, LP, NQ, RN)
# America/Argentina/Jujuy – Jujuy (JY)
# America/Argentina/Tucuman – Tucuman (TM)
# America/Argentina/Catamarca – Catamarca (CT), Chubut (CH)
# America/Argentina/La Rioja – La Rioja (LR)
# America/Argentina/San Juan – San Juan (SJ)
# America/Argentina/Mendoza – Mendoza (MZ)
# America/Argentina/San Luis – San Luis (SL)
# America/Argentina/Rio Gallegos – Santa Cruz (SC)
# America/Argentina/Ushuaia – Tierra del Fuego (TF)
# America/Argentina/Santiago_del_Estero (SE)
Full History
Notes
:1.Date format: DD-MM-YYYY
:2.
Catamarca,
Chubut,
Jujuy,
La Pampa,
La Rioja,
Mendoza,
Neuquén,
Río Negro,
Salta,
San Juan,
San Luis,
Santa Cruz and
Tierra del Fuego, Antártida e Islas del Atlántico Sur, continued using -3 Timezone.
References
tz database– The tz database contains an extensive history of time zone and daylight saving time changes, with references to official sources for changes to time zones, for Argentina and the rest of the world.
External links
Husos Horarios Adoptados en la República Argentina- Servicio de Hidrografía Naval, Ministerio de Defensa
Geography of Argentina
Time in South America
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