A major astronomical event is taking place across parts of the U.S. right now, and it has the potential to wreak havoc on GPS. That raises questions about the trucking industry’s reliance on GPS and what would happen if truckers lost navigation today.
The event in question is one of the most powerful solar storms to be forecast in the past 20 years. It is occurring across the continental U.S., and it has the astronomy community abuzz with excitement. The storm watch began Friday and will remain in effect until Sunday.
Many stargazers are thrilled by the possibility of catching a glimpse of aurorae, lights that appear in the sky due to solar energy and particles traveling down the Earth’s magnetic field. If you’re seeing these lights closer to the North Pole, they are commonly known as the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. This weekend the solar storm could bring them closer tto Americans in the Lower 48 states as well.
But the storm could also bring technological turmoil.
According to Astronomy.com, the Space Weather Prediction Center on Thursday issued its first G4-level storm watch since 2005. This is a significant watch but was not expected to cause widespread issues, per the center, as of Friday morning.
However, solar storms of any size have the ability to mess with technology.
According to astronomy expert and senior editor of Astronomy Magazine Mark Zastrow, a solar storm is a speeding cloud of charged particles barreling through the solar system. Under the right conditions, when those particles slam into Earth, the storm can inject energy straight into the planet’s magnetic field.
That can induce currents in high-voltage power lines that have the potential to cause entire grids to go down. Sometimes it can be accompanied by high-energy radiation, which can cause hardware errors on satellites, forcing them to lose control.
Additionally, the interference a large storm creates in the ionosphere can degrade signals to radios and GPS devices, or even render them useless for a period of time. A lot of critical infrastructure is potentially vulnerable to extremely powerful geomagnetic storms.
FreightWaves Enterprise Trucking Expert Thomas Wasson says that in the event GPS systems go down, the impact on trucking would be immediately felt. Most of the driver population relies on specific trucking GPS systems that account for weight- and height-restricted roads, in addition to helping them find shippers, receivers and even fuel stops. In a worst-case scenario, there would be supply chain delays as fleets work around the lack of visibility and drivers revert to using trucking road atlases.