Overview
- A Geophysical Research Letters study found that a geomagnetic storm on November 11, 2025 produced GNSS positioning errors larger than about 33 feet across much of the continental United States.
- The team combined aurora‑camera images with dense ground GNSS receiver networks to trace a wide band of intense ionospheric density gradients that changed radio signal travel time.
- Those ionospheric irregularities pushed the auroral oval south and caused hours‑long signal fluctuations that reached from the West Coast to the East Coast and down to Florida.
- Researchers warned that errors of this size can break GPS‑guided farm equipment and push autonomous vehicles off course, and they pointed to May 2024 storm losses of roughly $500 million to show real economic risk.
- The authors call for coordinated observations and physics‑based models to improve forecasting and early warnings but note current prediction tools remain limited.