Prepare For New Solar Storm on Friday

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (DTN) -- Get ready for round two of solar storms. According to the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), a new coronal mass ejection, or CME, associated with an X1.4 flare is likely to "enhance" the Earth's magnetic field late Friday into early Saturday.

What does that mean?

The SWPC is not predicting a solar storm over the next 48 hours as severe as the one that occurred three weeks ago. That geomagnetic storm disrupted global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) positioning receivers across North America, in some instances delaying planting, which is heavily reliant on a radio signal for real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning.

But SWPC does predict a moderate-level, G2 geomagnetic storm and an increased risk for radio blackouts. It is not possible to predict an exact area that may be affected.

In a G2 magnetic storm, the aurora may become visible over some northern and upper Midwest states from New York to Idaho. Also, high-frequency radio propagation can fade at higher latitudes. That means this storm could affect the quality of radio transmissions between Earth-specific locations by way of the ionosphere in affected areas. A G2 geomagnetic storm is considered a moderate solar event, based on a scale from G1 minor to G5 extreme.

"A quiet, flat ocean is very nice for a boat in which to keep its position," Max Hiltmair, strategic marketing manager for agriculture at Trimble, told DTN/Progressive Farmer. "But if the ocean is disturbed, with big waves, it becomes very dynamic. It's hard for a boat to keep its direction. If the ionosphere is disturbed (by a geomagnetic storm), it's the same for a GNSS receiver. This last time it hit North America very hard. Radio signals moving through the ionosphere were severely disrupted, (creating) significant downtime with corrections."

The ionosphere is made of electronically charged (ionized) gas particles. It extends from 37 to 190 miles above the earth's surface. Bouncing radio signals off the ionosphere allows radio to reach places all over the world. In mid-May, a sunspot region produced a severe X8.7 flare (X-flares are the most severe) and extreme, top-of-the-scale G5 geomagnetic storms.

Hiltmair cautions that these higher-activity solar storms may be an ongoing issue through 2025, as they occur as part of the current, maximum 11-year solar cycle. The solar disruptions are most apparent to farmers if they occur during planting, as they did recently, or if they occur during the coming harvest.

To maintain productivity through solar events, the number of satellites usable by the GNSS receiver is key to mitigating the impact of ionospheric effects, Hiltmair said. While RTK corrections rely on the capability of a base station, Trimble CenterPoint RTX, paired with a Trimble NAV-900 GNSS receiver, provides multi-constellation corrections from more than 100 navigation satellites. The more signals that are available to a high-quality GNSS receiver, the more equipped it will be to reduce the effects of ionospheric disturbances. Trimble says its RTX technology provides real-time, centimeter-level corrections.

Here are additional practices that will help farmers prepare for the solar activities that degrade radio signals.

-- Understand what part of any equipment or data system relies on GPS or radio frequencies (RF), and how resilient that equipment is to RF/GPS noise. For example, are the GPS receivers in your combine single- or dual-frequency receivers? Single-frequency receivers are more susceptible to space weather.

-- Have a short-term local data backup system. Send data to both the cloud and a short-term, local backup system if the connection to the cloud is compromised.

-- Sign up for space weather alerts/watches/warnings at NOAA space weather prediction center, www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/alerts-watches-and-warnings. Find SWPC predictions at www.swpc.noaa.gov.

-- If you notice an issue with the GPS systems, look at the NOAA alerts or the Navigation Centers civilian GPS outage reports (www.navcen.uscg.gov/gps-problem-report-status) to determine whether the source is environmental or a hardware problem.

Up-to-date positioning equipment is important to the best management practices that should be deployed while farming anytime, but especially around solar flares and geomagnetic storms.

"This is a natural phenomenon," Hiltmair said. "And, yes, we can (better manage) these disturbances by keeping up with modern hardware. And there are forecasts such as (SWPC) and Trimble's (www.gnssplanning.com) available. Planning your productivity, informing yourself with what is going on (in space) is definitely helpful when you have to get seed into the ground."

Trimble develops its positioning corrections with multiple satellite constellations operated by several governments and agencies: GPS (U.S.), GLONASS (Russian Federation), Galileo (European Space Agency), BeiDou (China) and QZSS (Japan).

"(CenterPoint RTX and NAV-900) rely on many satellites, which helps the GNNS receiver to calculate its position (in a more) robust way, more accurately and faster," said Hiltmair. "You will survive better if you take advantage of this multi-constellation, multi-frequency approach."

Trimble's www.gnssplanning.com provides up to 24 hours of location-specific data and charts about navigation satellites (health status and sky plots) as well as ionospheric activity. The data allows users to identify the best time windows to carry out their work.

For an earlier DTN report on these solar events go to: https://www.dtnpf.com/….

Dan Miller can be reached at dan.miller@dtn.com

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