Via SpaceWeather.com
Earth’s ionosphere is a bit like Swiss cheese. It contains holes called “equatorial plasma bubbles.” If any of these bubbles drift across your sky–grip the steering wheel–your GPS might go haywire.
That’s exactly what happened during a geomagnetic storm in March 2023. A new study published in the research journal Space Weather recounts how GPS radio signals began to rapidly flicker, akin to the twinkling of a star, causing positioning errors across a wide swath of the Americas.
GPS satellites transmitting through a bubbly ionosphere.
“This is the most intense event we have analyzed,” says Fabiano Rodrigues, a physics professor at the University of Texas at Dallas and one of the paper’s lead authors. “It produced extremely intense disruptions at low latitudes for more than 10 hours and was even detectable by our mid-latitude sensor in Dallas (UTD in the diagram below), which is unusual.”
Completely surrounding Earth, the ionosphere is a shell of ionized gas created by the sun. Solar ultraviolet radiation ionizes air near the edge of space, creating a dynamic layer of plasma that varies with solar activity, time of day, and latitude. The ionosphere plays a critical role in GPS systems by reflecting or distorting radio waves passing through it.
When the sun sets, the ionosphere becomes unstable. This happens because the sun’s ionizing radiation suddenly disappears. A Rayleigh-Taylor instability takes hold, and bubbles of low-density plasma begin to rise, much like blobs in a lava lamp.
These structures are especially common near the magnetic equator, where electric and magnetic fields enhance the effect. That’s why they’re called equatorial plasma bubbles.
The March 23-24, 2023, event was remarkable because the bubbles were so widespread. They are normally confined within +/- 20 degrees of the magnetic equator, but during this storm, they spread at least twice as far, affecting population centers at middle latitudes. Peak position errors were wider than urban roadways.
Above: Red-orange-yellow marks where rapid fluctuations were observed during the March 2023 geomagnetic storm. A plume of yellow extends all the way into Texas.
Savvy readers may wonder if something similar happened during the Great Geomagnetic Storm of May 2024. After all, that was the biggest geomagnetic storm in decades (G5+), far more intense than the March 2023 storm (G4). The answer, surprisingly, seems to be “no.” The same sensors were running during both storms, yet only the lesser storm produced extraordinary scintillation.
“This is an example of how the ionosphere can respond differently to different magnetic storms,” says Rodrigues. “We still have a lot to learn.”
Do It Yourself: Rodrigues’s team monitors equatorial plasma bubbles using a low-cost sensor called ScintPi, based on the Raspberry Pi computer. You can build one yourself. Hobbyists are using them to observe geomagnetic storms and even solar eclipses.
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And how did CO2 cause this? I mean, we all know that CO2 drives everything, so it must be making this worse somehow.
Now doesn’t that conjure up new speculation of what HAARP was for?
Interesting article. Since I fly drones for remote sensing, sometimes repeatedly relying on GPS to position accurately, it is of interest to know what sources of deviation exist at the times of observation. As far as I know, there is no data base which provides this information generally? The growing dependence for automated driving, flying, etc. requires assured accuracy and precision. This would appear to be compounded in crowded or complex areas such as interiors of cities with reflections, scattering, dependence on specific humidity, etc. making autonomous driving more complex. Having a human present should help as long as the human is paying attention, but may not prevent accidents. One can imagine a freeway with autonomous vehicles suddenly all going in every direction – bedlam.
IF YOU ARE GOING TO PUT EVERYTHING IN BOLD WHY NOT ADD ITALICS AND UNDERLINING TOO THAT WILL SURELY DO A BETTER JOB OF GETTING YOUR POINT ACROSS.
I’m very disappointed with the information given in the video, and in the article below it, not what I was expecting!
What does this “twinkling” cause? Does it cause positioning defects, or does it shut off GPS for a short time?
If I’m driving down an interstate, and my GPS says in 1,000 feet, turn right, when in actuality it’s only 100 feet, that’s a serious problem! Or does it not say anything when you are to turn right in 1,000 feet?
I sometimes worry about GPS when I am depending on it to be accurate!
Here is a hint, turn that crap off and learn how follow a map. You’re welcome.
Anything that changes the path length to your receiver from the GPS satellite will affect positioning data. Most receivers are looking at 3 to 6 satellites at any given time and will reject the signal from a jittery path and rely on the stable signals from the other satellites. So an expensive unit with signal monitoring will have the correct position, while the cheap units will have more problems. The cheapest units actually use the cell towers for positioning and will be fine as long as there are enough towers to triangulate on.
Yes correct answer from Georgia.
Answer to navigation and drone question both: depends on software not equatorial plasma bubbles. The GPS receiver either provides a helpful number or it doesn’t, then your device… does whatever it does. Satellites have sent the same signal format for decades, modified recently for better US military use. The navigation software that takes the GPS as an input decides what to do when the input is not a helpful number.
When will we ever learn THAT?
which of course nobody at all noticed, in any practical sense. GPS signals “twinkle” all the time. Their path through the chaotic atmosphere is constantly changing.
The final result is “good enough for Government work”.
Quite amazing that the systems work at all, considering.
A few years ago, sitting round the fire and stomping some brain cells with some fellow vets who did time in Afghanisuckistan the failures of GPS were an extended topic of discussion. I wonder if this phenomena could have been part of their problems in the Hindu Kush, a region with magnetic anomalies all its own.
Somewhere in the late 1990s, commercial cell phones and driving navigators and jogger wristwatches took over, and technology optimized on cheap/small rf receiver chips with good yield. The big trick was getting a low noise amplifier with 100dB gain for teeny tiny signals to survive the noise.
Point being: Military paid the bills to get it all working then a lot of companies made hay on it.
I’m having my first cuppa. I just lit off my GIS app GPS. It usually crawls around a bit then decides I’m really not moving. Without any actual movement it recorded a 20 foot to the NW and back loop. Now it is sulkily stationary, showing an eight foot circle of uncertainty. I have seen it build up a couple hundred feet of this dithering before. I just picked the phone up and it added 15 feet. Apparently, the app turns off the GPS inputs if the IMU isn’t sensing motion. Up to 63 feet now and I need more coffee. If I just gyrate the phone in place 10-20 degrees it builds up distance traveled at about 1 foot per sec. And the circle of uncertainty expands. It takes just a few seconds of no motion for the GPS to go dormant. I wonder if my GPS would record any anomalous change of location due to scintillation without it in motion.
New track with it on another table so I’m not vibrating it while typing. 12 feet in 3 minutes, 8 feet radius of uncertainty.
So Cal desert, two gentlemen, surveyors. In this area, five acre parcels, 330′ x 660′. They had to replace markers for a block of land that was being sold, and the original survey pegs were long gone. They asked if any of my original markers still existed. Took them down to the south east corner, an original, undisturbed. Tripod, plumb bob, and a GPS receiver. They let it work for over thirty minutes – averaging? – I have no idea. This was a good twenty years ago, drift, variation was already known about?
Yes, I would think averaging and of course there were probably fewer and less accurate satellites then. Maybe that had something to do with it. Averaging is good! GPS is amazing technology…
What is the exact mechanism?
GPS uses time of arrival of signals to determine range to calculate your location.
Water vapour in atmosphere affects accuracy, hence WAS and LAS correction signals based on local ground stations.
Good receivers detect large differences between satellites and warn users and exclude an offendig satellite from position calculation.
“The “level of abstraction” refers to the degree to which a description of something (an idea, a process, or a system) is generalized or simplified, omitting specific details. Higher levels of abstraction provide broader, more conceptual overviews, while lower levels delve into finer details and specific implementations.”
Some here would appreciate more detail, but the story could quickly run down 100 different technology rabbit holes.