Space Weather and the Global Positioning System

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Subscriber Access to Full Article SPACE WEATHER, VOL. 6, S06D04, doi:10.1029/2008SW000400, 2008 Space Weather and the Global Positioning System Anthea Coster Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Haystack Observatory, Westford, Mass., USA Attila Komjathy NASA/California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., USA Abstract The ability to monitor space weather in near–real time is required as our society becomes increasingly dependent on technological systems such as the Global Positioning System (GPS). Certain critical applications such as railway control, highway traffic management, emergency response, commercial aviation, and marine navigation require high-precision positioning. As a consequence, these applications require real-time knowledge of space weather effects. In recent years, GPS itself has become recognized as one of the premier remote sensing tools to monitor space weather events. For this reason, Space Weather has opened a special section called “Space Weather Effects on GPS.” Papers in this section describe the use of GPS as a monitor of space weather events and discuss how GPS is used to observe ionospheric irregularities and total electron content gradients. Other papers address the implications that these space weather features may have on GPS and on Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) operations in general. Space weather impacts on GPS include the introduction of range errors and the loss of signal reception, both of which can have severe effects on marine and aviation navigation, surveying, and other critical real-time applications. Published 6 June 2008. Keywords: GPS; Space Weather; History. Index Terms: 2494 Ionosphere: Instruments and techniques; 2499 Ionosphere: General or miscellaneous; 7934 Space Weather: Impacts on technological systems. Subscriber Access to Full Article Citation: Coster, A., and A. Komjathy (2008), Space Weather and the Global Positioning System, Space Weather, 6, S06D04, doi:10.1029/2008SW000400. Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical Union.

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