November 2025 solar superstorm knocked US GPS off by up to 33 feet

The geomagnetic superstorm that lit up skies with unusually low-latitude auroras in November 2025 also produced a form of ionospheric disruption researchers say has never been observed at this scale over the continental US. A team led by space physicist Endawoke Yizengaw of The Aerospace Corporation, publishing in Geophysical Research Letters, found strong amplitude scintillation stretching coast to coast, roughly from 80 to 120 degrees west longitude. As the auroral oval pushed toward the equator, it dragged the kind of atmospheric turbulence normally confined to polar and equatorial regions into the mid-latitudes that are usually considered calm.

The mechanism is refraction through a lumpy medium: energetic particles raining into the ionosphere create sharp density irregularities, and GPS/GNSS signals passing through get distorted and diffracted, causing their strength to fluctuate at ground receivers. Piecing together aurora cameras and a network of ground-based GNSS receivers, the researchers watched electron density, irregularities, and signal scintillation all intensify in lockstep with the brightening aurora. In some regions horizontal positioning errors topped 10 meters (33 feet) — more than enough to break systems that depend on precise location.

The practical stakes are real for GPS-reliant industries: even one or two meters of error can disrupt autonomous vehicles and agricultural machinery, and the May 2024 storm is estimated to have cost US agriculture $500 million. November 2025 landed outside the farming season, so the damage was largely luck of the draw — the authors note that the same storm during planting or harvest could have caused major losses. With the Sun near the peak of its 11-year cycle, the work argues for better physics-based modeling and coordinated observation to predict these events and harden critical navigation infrastructure before the next big one.