Solar storms that have stunned people with their northern lights across the United States over the past two nights have also disrupted GPS satellites, crippling the operations of some farmers in the Midwest, reports 404 Media. These problems have forced many to stop planting as a crucial deadline for corn growers approaches.
The storms reportedly temporarily knocked “some GPS systems” offline, disrupting the accuracy of “real-time kinematics” (RTK) systems. Tractors from John Deere and other brands use RTK for “centimeter-level positioning accuracy” when performing agricultural work like planting or fertilizing. 404 Media writing.
The “extremely compromised” systems caused “drastic changes in fields and even course changes” for those who continued to plant during the outages, according to a warning of Kansas and Nebraska, John Deere Landmark Implement dealer this weekend. Landmark said the planted rows won't be where AutoPath, a tractor guidance system, thinks they are later when it's time to take care of them, and it could be difficult or impossible , to use it in fields that were planted while the GPS systems were compromised. .
While the solar storms, among the worst to hit Earth in more than two decades according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are expected to subside soon, they come at a critical time for corn crops. Willie Cade of the right-to-repair advocacy group Repair.org said 404 Media that May 15 “is a critical date for planting corn,” calling it “huge” if corn farmers can't plant their crops by then.
Organic farmer Tom Schwarz, also quoted in the article, said solar storms had disrupted their operations and weather forecasts now threatened to delay planting even further. His farm and others like it use RTK systems to plant crops right up to the edge of the lanes that tractors use to travel between them, and if the GPS was inaccurate during planting, they risk destroying the crops further late, because human drivers “can’t steer.” fast enough or well enough” to keep the tractors between the rows.
On a large scale, agriculture practiced today relies heavily on high-tech tractors, often highly automated and other equipment. If they fail, farmers often have no recourse because the technology covers the entire life cycle of their crops. This dependence partly explains why there is so much momentum behind right to repair laws now because farmers want to be able to repair their tractors when they break down, rather than being beholden to manufacturers for this.
Geomagnetic storms like the ones affecting farmers this weekend are created when plasma and magnetized particles are thrown out of the sun in what are called coronal mass ejections. NOAA evaluates them on an increasingly severe scale from G1 to G5. The storm that has hit the Earth in recent days reached the G5.
NOAA calls 'severe to extreme' solar storms G4 or higher could happen again today. So far, the storms have not resulted in many reports of solar storm-related disruptions, although Starlink has experienced “degraded performance,” as Starlink explains. Reuters wrote, while some on Reddit have reported problems with flight systems Or Amateur radio broadcasts.