Endawoke Yizengaw of The Aerospace Corporation found that a November 2025 solar storm sent coast-to-coast atmospheric disturbances across the continental US and pushed GPS off by more than 10 meters in some places. The analysis, published in Geophysical Research Letters, ties the storm to errors equal to about 33 feet.
Yizengaw and his colleagues used observations from aurora cameras and a network of ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System receivers across North America. They pieced together how the storm moved through the atmosphere while Earth was buffeted by several massive eruptions of solar material that slammed into the magnetosphere.
Endawoke Yizengaw and GPS
The researchers said the disruption reached a scale never seen before across the continental US. That is the unusual part of this event: ionospheric scintillation is generally considered relatively calm at mid-latitudes, yet this storm produced widespread coast-to-coast disturbances far beyond that expectation.
The paper also places the GPS impact in practical terms. Errors of more than 10 meters can matter for systems that depend on steady positioning, and the researchers said the storm’s GPS errors were significant enough to disrupt precision agriculture and autonomous vehicles.
November 2025 superstorm
As the November 2025 storm intensified, the auroral oval expanded toward the equator. A solar superstorm also lit up Earth's skies with dazzling auroras to rare low latitudes, while the same event changed conditions in the atmosphere that GPS signals must cross on their way to receivers.
That path matters because density fluctuations in the upper atmosphere can distort and diffract radio signals, and amplitude scintillation can make signal strength fluctuate rapidly before it reaches the ground. Solar flares can also unleash bursts of X-rays and ultraviolet radiation, and a coronal mass ejection can generate electrical currents that disrupt power grids and alter Earth's atmosphere.
Geophysical Research Letters
The paper in Geophysical Research Letters adds a measurement readers can use now: the storm did not just create auroras, it changed positioning quality across a broad swath of the US. For users who rely on precise GPS, the main takeaway is that even a storm centered in space weather can produce errors large enough to move a location estimate by tens of feet.
Endawoke Yizengaw said in the paper, “The results underscore the importance of accurate understanding of various space weather phenomena to enhance our predictive capabilities through coordinated observations and physics‐based modeling and ultimately reducing disruptions to RF applications during space weather events.”
