Arctic Investigation Underway Into Solar Storm Sat-Nav Disruption 40
another random user writes "Scientists in the Arctic have launched an urgent investigation into how solar storms can disrupt sat-nav. Studies have revealed how space weather can cut the accuracy of GPS by tens of metres. Flares from the Sun interact with the upper atmosphere and can distort the signals from global positioning satellites. The project is under way at a remote observatory on a windswept mountainside in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the High Arctic. The site was chosen for its isolation from electronic pollution and for its position in relation to the Earth's magnetic field which flows from space down towards the far North."
Re:"Tens of metres" (Score:4, Informative)
In theory it can, but in practice, we can't calculate the correction fast enough during serious storms. The CPOS system normally provides real-time cm-precision positioning in Norway, but it breaks down during some storms. Improving this is a subject of research. See this article for details: http://www.swsc-journal.org/articles/swsc/pdf/2012/01/swsc120026.pdf