Having spent a week in February in Tenerife and enjoyed the much later sunsets and warmer weather than the UK, I thought I’d add a footnote to my blog post about our trip to explain those later sunsets.
There are two factors at play, first the Canary Islands are much further west than the UK but are in the same time zone (GMT at this time of year). The islands being about 1500 km west of the UK, or 15 degrees of longitude, means that as the earth rotates and the sun goes down there the islands lag behind by about an hour 60 minutes. So if sunset in London is 5pm, it will be about 6pm in the Canaries. However…
The Canary Islands are located around 28–29° N, while the UK is at a much higher latitude (around 51–59° N). The closer you are to the Equator the less difference there is between the number of daylight hours in the summer and winter. The sun essentially rises and sets at roughly the same time year-round, whereas it varies so much more in the UK. In the UK, the days are much shorter in February due to the tilt of the Earth. The difference in latitude accounts for another hour.
So, on our trip, the Tenerife sunset was a little before 7pm whereas it was about 5pm in the UK, which made for some balmy early evenings watching the Atlantic roll across the rocks and the sun go down behind La Gomera.