AIBRIEF
A peer reviewed study of the November 2025 superstorm measured positioning errors above 30 feet across most of the U.S., large enough to disrupt autonomous vehicles and GPS guided farm equipment.
A solar superstorm on November 11, 2025 threw off GPS positioning by more than 30 feet from the West Coast to Florida, according to a peer-reviewed study in Geophysical Research Letters that combined aurora-camera data with ground-based GPS receivers across the U.S. and Canada.
High-energy electrons from the Sun rode Earth's magnetic field into the upper atmosphere, where they collided with gas molecules and distorted the ionosphere, the charged layer that bends and slows the radio signals GPS depends on. Disturbances usually peak at the equator and poles; the November superstorm pushed them deep into the mid-latitudes for roughly six hours.
That scale of error would have been enough to veer autonomous vehicles off course and send GPS-guided tractors drifting out of their rows. The authors do not document actual crashes; modern AVs and farm systems carry inertial, RTK, and lidar backups that can compensate.
A May 2024 geomagnetic storm struck the American Midwest during planting season and cost farmers more than $500 million, per Space.com reporting cited by Gizmodo. The November 2025 storm hit outside planting season; the paper's authors flag what a similar event during farming would have cost.
Solar storms arrive with little warning, and it remains unclear whether AV fleets or farm operators monitor ionospheric conditions in real time.