Solar activity likely to remain high next few yearsMore powerful geomagnetic storm events are possible. Northern Lights may grab headlines, but it’s the invisible GPS disturbance that could disrupt our technological world and determine the fate of your next peanut butter sandwich.
Charged particles are thrown towards the earth Sun Geomagnetic storms can trigger storms that illuminate the sky with spectacular northern lights, but they can also quietly interfere with satellites and GPS The signals on which our modern world depends. space weather Airline flights may be stopped, cancel rocket launchDistorting radio signals, confusing navigation systems, and as of May 2024, even damaging farmers’ tractors behave as if they are possessed,
agricultural economist terry griffinBased in Kansas, it is studying what happens when solar storms hit agriculture. Their latest research, which is currently under peer review, reveals how much a major space weather event could cost and why peanuts are so vulnerable.
Why are peanuts a special kind of GPS problem?
Many crops now depend on satellite navigation, but peanuts are particularly dependent. Once the peanut plant canopy develops, the peanuts are hidden underground and farmers cannot see where the rows are.
This is why peanut farming relies heavily on RTK GPS (real-time kinematic GPS), which provides sub-centimeter accuracy and, importantly, retains that accuracy even months later.
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“It’s essential that we measure the planting progress, or the planting path, with the RTK GPS,” Griffin told Space.com in an interview. “Sub-centimeter accuracy is really important and RTK gives us that accuracy months or even years later.”
If RTK signals are lost during planting or digging, farmers can’t follow lines they can’t see, and yields suffer.
“If we didn’t have our RTK GPS, we would lose at least 11% of production by leaving nuts in the ground,” Griffin said.
when storm gannon came EarthIt did so at a critical time of year for American agriculture. This occurred during peak planting season.
“When May 2024 came around, we had this G5 hurricane, it was a perfect storm,” Griffin said. “Hurricane Gannon happened at the perfect time to be a big deal. If it had happened a month earlier, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. So, the time of year is really important.”
Million-Dollar Choice: Continue Planting or Wait?
When the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNNS) goes out of action, peanut farmers are faced with two costly choices: continue planting without RTK, but risk a mistimed dig months later and an 11% yield penalty; Or stop planting and wait, but risk a ‘biological penalty’ as the crop loses valuable growth time. Like most plants, peanuts require a certain amount of heat, called ‘heat-unit accumulation’, to go through their growth stages and produce high-quality fruits. “We only plant a few weeks a year, and if we delay a week at the beginning of the season, it’s not a big deal, but if we delay that week later in the season, it’s a big deal,” Griffin said.
Griffin’s modeling shows that ill-timed decisions during a GPS outage, such as farmers deciding when to plant or waiting to see when they should plant, could jeopardize more than $100 million worth of peanut production across the Southeastern US. In a worst-case scenario, approximately 262 kilotonnes (577 million pounds or 262 million kilograms) of peanuts destined for human consumption could be destroyed.
The need for ‘Period Nowcast’
Right now, farmers hardly know whether the GPS outage will last for two hours or two days. That uncertainty forces farmers to fall back on their default, which may be to continue or wait; Every manufacturer is different.
Griffin proposes a new type of forecast: period “nowcasts,” which would provide farmers with short-term predictions about how long RTK-level GPS will be unavailable.
“If we have sustained RTK GPS outages, it could help us answer the question, ‘How long will this outage last?'” Griffin said. “This will inform them what their best decision is and will have tremendous value to the peanut farmer.”
Griffin’s analysis showed that waiting to plant initially was the best decision, while continuing operations later was favoured. According to their estimates, the accuracy of space weather forecasts could be worth $20 million annually for Georgia alone, and $33 million for the broader American Southeast, about 5% of the total peanut crop value, and more than twice the economic value typically attributed to terrestrial weather forecasts.
Griffin said farmers constantly check weather forecast apps, which is why he believes space weather alerts should be delivered through the tools they already trust.
“Farmers look at weather apps all the time… so having a piggy bank with two types of weather makes a lot of sense,” Griffin said.
He said it would also be useful to have an in-cab warning system in tractors and other equipment, which would include a simple alert letting farmers know when their GPS signal is not reliable.
turning point
The Gannon hurricane of May 2024 proved to be a turning point for agriculture. As Griffin says, “May 9 was a different world than May 11. On May 11, awareness increased dramatically.” Before that weekend, the idea of a widespread GPS outage seemed far-fetched to many. Griffin remembers presenting the scenario at a conference, “The crowd was in laughter, as you know, this is never going to happen.”
The May storm also revealed some profound things, as it was the first time modern agriculture had experienced a truly strong solar storm. High-precision GPS was not widely used in the fields until the end of solar cycle 23, and almost no major disturbances occurred in the following solar cycle 24. This means that the United States never expected that the two-thirds of the country’s land mass that now depends on satellite navigation could cause a severe geomagnetic storm. that all changed solar cycle 25. The May 2024 event, the most powerful geomagnetic storm in 20 years, became the first real test of how space weather affects GPS-guided planting, digging and harvesting.
For Griffin, the next step is preparation. Compared to terrestrial weather, “we know very little about space weather”, he said, and many farmers had never heard the term until their tractors started working. but with the new satellites Such as NOAA’s SWFO-L1 satellite observatory, as well as NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and the Carruthers GeoCorona Observatory. Improve monitoring and forecastingScientists hope the agriculture sector will get something it has never had before: clear, actionable guidance on how long GPS outages will last and what farmers can do.
“If we can create predictions that are useful to end users, that would be a huge step forward,” Griffin said.
