This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: On Nov. 11, 2025, Earth experienced a severe geomagnetic storm triggered by solar flares and coronal mass ejections from an active sunspot region. While this kind of storm brings beautiful auroras admired in many areas around the world, it can also cause ionospheric disturbances that disrupt radio waves and affect crucial technologies.
A new study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, found that disruptions caused by this storm scrambled GPS signals in areas where such disruptions have never been reported. The auroral oval is a dynamic, asymmetric ring centered around Earth's magnetic poles within which auroras occur. Normally, the auroral oval extends from around 65° to 75° geomagnetic latitude, which is far north.
However, during strong geomagnetic storms, the auroral oval extends farther into lower latitudes, often making auroras visible in northern Europe and America. During these storms, Earth's ionosphere—a charged layer of the upper atmosphere—can become turbulent. This causes satellite radio signals passing through this region to experience scintillation, in which they rapidly fluctuate in amplitude and phase.
This can reduce the accuracy of GPS and other satellite-navigation systems. These effects are usually strongest near the equator and the polar regions. "In contrast, the mid-latitude ionosphere generally exhibits more stable conditions and may not inherently pose a significant threat to RF applications.
However, during intense magnetic storms, high-latitude phenomena—such as auroral precipitation—can extend into mid-latitude regions. Low-latitude phenomena, such as storm-enhanced density (SED) plumes, can similarly expand toward mid-latitudes under storm conditions and contribute to scintillation effects in the mid-latitude region," the authors of the new study explain. To take a closer look at what happened during the November 2025 storm, the team combined aurora-camera observations with ground-based GPS receiver networks across the U.S. and Canada.
They mapped ionospheric electron density, turbulence, signal fluctuations and positioning errors that occurred during the storm. The researchers say the auroral oval migrated toward the equator and enhanced electron precipitation—where high-energy electrons travel down Earth's magnetic field lines and collide with gases in the upper atmosphere—over a wide range of longitudes. They say this led to pronounced amplitude scintillation in the U.S. and other mid-latitude regions.
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