Solar Storm this week

I saw this article on line this morning:

A cloud of high energy plasma many times larger than earth was shot from the sun over the weekend and could begin battering the earth's protective magnetic field as early as Tuesday evening. The solar storm poses no danger to people on the surface, but could play havoc with satellite communications and power systems. On the upside, it could also provide residents in the lower 48 states a rare light show as far south as Texas.

This will be interesting to watch the PDOP on our receivers over the next few days! Heck, we migh not even be able to get a fixed position. It would be interesting to see how many surveyors notice a difference if any during this solar storm. Enjoy the Photon Light Show!

This will be very interesting as far as interference with communication devices, etc......all the 2012 doomsday programs highlighted the solar interuptions that will occur.......bring on the light show....

Mr. Christian,

With ionospheric disturbance, you will not see anything with PDOP.  The DOP's are a measure of geometry of the received satellites.  The ionospheric disturbances degrades the low wattage signal in a very random pattern due to the scintillation of the phenomena. 


If you are using RTK, you may or may not have localization problems.  There is an increased chance you will have incorrect localizations.   Be careful, repeat measure at differing times any points of importance you are positioning with RTK.   Network vectors of any post-processed data with re-observations or cross vectors.

Best bet is keep an eye on spaceweather.com  They will have plots of the disturbance.

I agree with Northern. The PDOP's are a simple display of the geometry and not of signal strength or the noise that can, and will disrupt signals. The GPS signal is pretty faint so it does not take much to muddy up the ability of a receiver to discern the actual signal or it's chips and wavelenghts. 

And this is the link to spaceweather. I use it all the time.

Spaceweather

Not just one but two CME's happened that are directed at the earth. I just hope it does not knock out any SV"s permanently . Cell phone grids and power grids are also at risk if it's really as bad as they predict. It's all based on your latitude though and where it is directed.

AMMO UP..

Deral

Thanks Deral, forgot to put the link up.

Another thing to remember is that the ionospheric disturbances are most significant in the polar regions (higher latitudes).  Believe me, we have much more havoc up here, when there is very little noticed effect in the mid-latitudes. 

Which reminds me, I better let our crews working in Barrow (71 degrees North) know of these CME's!!

With a nod to SRV it looks like the recent halo-CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) has significantly upset the space weather.  Here is the latest plot. 



Looks pretty interesting for those attempting to work in the super latitudes (far north like NS). We are just starting to  head up the ramp on Cycle 24 of the 10.7 year solar cycle. The peak this time should be around mid 2013 but it's already becoming active. This one was a pretty big flare, actually two of them and both directed to the earth. The event happened on Aug 1st and should subside around Aug 6th, give or take a day. 

I downloaded 6 hours of recent data from a Fairbanks, Alaska CORS and took a look at the raw plots. The data had an RMS of nearly 8 and I generally see 3 or less so that would imply that the data is going to be very noisy. I think you can safely do short base lines but units might have troubles with getting initialized and I would not want to try any long baselines. This would include using OPUS although I'm going to send in Fairbanks to OPUS and see what it spits out just for grins and giggles.

Do they make sunscreen for GPS units? 

And you might have problems with cell phones or other electronic devices. Hopefully this time the electrical grid is better protected and they don't have any serious blackouts.

Deral