May 2024 Solar Storm cost $ 500 million in damage to farmers, reveals new study

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Location signals radiated to the earth by GPS satellites were hundreds of feet during the Gannon Solar Storm in May last year, and the disturbance lasted a maximum of two days in some American regions, a new study unveiled. The malfunction caused destruction on the agricultural sector, which loses more than $ 500 million suffering.

A succession of powerful eruptions of solar energy at the beginning of May last year caused the most powerful solar storm to hit the earth in 20 years. Later named after the deceased spacecraft scientist Jennifer Gannon, visibly produced the Zonnestorm Auroras as far to the south as Mexico, Portugal and Spain. It also provided GPS for days in Haywire.

Farmers in the American Midwest, at that time at the height of the planting season, reported that their GPS-conducted tractors behaved as if they were “possessed” during the storm, according to accounts. A new study has now quantified how large those GPS errors were not only during the highlight of the storm, but also in the aftermath when a persistent Aurora GPS signals remained.

A team of researchers from Boston University used data from close to 100 very accuracy, fixed GPS recipients spread over the US that form a seismic research network that measures the movements of tectonic plates. It appears that the network is also perfectly suitable for studying space reverse effects in the ionosphere of the earth, a low electrically charged air that has found 30 miles (48 kilometers) above the earth. The effects that solar storms have on the ionosphere can influence the measurements of GPS recipients.

“GPS recipients work with the assumption that the ionosphere has a uniform plasmodicity,” said Waqar Younas, a researcher of the physics at Boston University and main author of the paper, on Space.com. “But a solar storm creates ionicities in the ionosphere and while the signal goes through the ionosferic layers, mistakes grows.”

When a solar storm strikes, the charged sun plates that it entails and disrupt the ionosphere. While the weak signals from the global positioning satellites go through this sudden turbulent region, they are thrown off the course.

Because the regular GPS recipients are firmly attached to the ground in the research network, any change in their positioning data can only be a result of turbulence in the ionosphere. Measurements of this scientific GPS network revealed the scale of these errors with great accuracy and researchers were able to reconstruct what had happened during the storm in the ionosphere.

“By measuring the disruption of the signal, we can see the structure of the plasma in the upper atmosphere,” Toshi Nishimura, a professor in space physics and co-author of the new study, told Spapce.com.

Analysis of the data showed that the storm created a “Wall of Ionospheric Plasma” extends over the North -American continent. This wall threw GPS signals with a maximum of 230 feet (70 meters) in central American states, with smaller errors of up to 65 feet (20 m) reported in the southwestern parts of the country.

The peak disturbance lasted approximately six hours on May 10, 2024, but things remained restless for two days, the study showed. After the shaken ionosphere began to calm down, the auroral lights activated by the storm caused further disturbances of GPS when loaded particles from the space dripped through the atmosphere along disturbed magnetic field lines. The GPS receiver network showed errors up to 30 feet (10 m) for the duration of this Auroras.

The whimsical behavior of GPS-guided agricultural machinery caused by the Gannon Solar Storm cost American farmers in the American midwest more than $ 500 million, according to Terry Griffin, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University.

“Because of the Gannon Storm, planting corn was delayed because our planters usually do not work,” Griffin told Space.com. “Currently, around 70% of the planted hectares in the United States are dependent on equipment that GPS automated guidelines use to make straight parallel lines through the field. We no longer even have physical road markings, and the equipment increases to the point that we can no longer work when the GPS is removed.”

But agriculture was not the only victim of the GPS chaos caused by space. Aircraft rely on GPS, not only to follow their paths, but especially to know their precise height during landing. Errors of up to four meters can be compensated, according to Nishimura. But the disturbance on 10 and 11 May last year was “far past that tolerant window,” said Nishimura.

Related stories:

– Powerful solar storms are a nightmare for farmers. ‘Our tractors acted as if they were possessed’

– It is a year since the most intense solar storm created Auroras worldwide in decades. What did we learn?

– Solar Storm Frenzy from May 2024 was strong enough to influence the deep sea

The Gannon Solar Storm was perhaps the strongest in two decades. But it only offered a weak taste of what the sun is capable of. The often discussed Worst Case Scenario is the so-called Carrington event-a storm that hit the earth in 1859, in which telegraaf services are eliminated all over the world. A storm of that power today would undoubtedly have broad consequences all over the world.

“During the Gannon Storm we saw the most intense impact in the central regions of the US,” said Nishimura. “But for an event of Carrington we would see over the entire continent disruption and so big errors that the signal would be unusable.”

Waqar says that in the future real-time prediction of ionospheric disruptions in combination with AI-driven predictions of GPS signal uniformities could help to correct the mistakes as a storm progresses.

The study was published in the JGR-Space Physics magazine on 9 June.