Storms Of (GPS) Life

The great Randy Travis had a wonderful hit called “Storms Of Life”.

I’d better change my wandrin ways,
I know I’ve seen my better days,
Always gettin’ high when I get low.
Well, I left my soul out in the rain,
Lord, what a price I’ve had to pay.
The storms of life are washin’ me away.

Do I think the GPS has seen its better days?  Not at all, but I do think GPS (and Glonass, and Galileo) may see a lot of storms over the next 4 years or so.

If you find your Global Positioning System (GPS) device acting weirdly, the problem might be the Sun. Researchers at Cornell University reported Wednesday that an unprecedented solar storm last December had a serious impact on GPS.

.. The findings, presented in Washington, D.C. at the first Space Weather Enterprise Forum, focused on a giant solar flare on December 6, 2006. It created a tremendous radio burst that caused GPS signals to be dropped for a large number of receivers, the researchers said.

Solar flares have been known to disrupt satellite communications and impact electricity grids before, but the researchers said the December event was different. Read More On Solar Flares at NASA.

Now if there’s one thing I hate about all forms of the media, including personal, opinionated blogs like this one, it’s those who run around with a lot of Chicken Little warnings.  S I am not about to issue any.  But I will say this:

• Solar Max, the approximately 11 year cycle of maximum solar disturbances is less than 4 years off
• We know little about the cycle, we know even less about its overall effect on GPS, since GPS was in its infancy during the last Solar Max
• Solar flares pump out huge bursts of energy right in the middle of the band used by GPS and all its current adjuncts/partners/competitors.
• There is no practical work around at this stage of the game.  We can’t increase the output power of the satellites to any degree and we can’t effectively shield existing receivers.

So what’s the word from industry?  I have been searching for a week now to find any rational tech articles that show any real work in progress.  For my pilot colleagues, better be very careful in getting rid of all the “steam gage” navigation on your instrument panel because especially for vertical guidance GPS is liable to suffer significant outages/anomalies over the next 4 or 5 years.  Or not.