Geomagnetic storms are messing with farming tech’s GPS systems

It's Monday, May 13, 2024.

Over the last few days, heightened solar activity (and those heady geomagnetic storms) led to outages in the GPS navigation systems that guide some modern tractors from John Deere and other brands. 404 Media reported farmers have been told to pause using high-tech tractors that use GPS systems to program and tightly farm their land. John Deere’s tractors’ Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) systems can apparently plant precisely, down to the centimeter. A bit of GPS noise could derail that.

The weekend’s geomagnetic storm is the strongest in the last 20 years and reached G5 levels, considered “extreme,” on Friday and Saturday morning.

— Mat Smith

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