Now It Gets Interesting: GPS and the Onset of Solar Cycle 23

Joseph M. Kunches

Abstract:	Indications of the start of Solar Cycle 23 are now beginning to appear in solar observations. This re-awakening of the Sun, and the corresponding increase in solar activity affecting GPS, will become ever more obvious in the next few years. A blue-ribbon panel was convened in September 1996 and forecast the maximum of Cycle 23 to occur in the 1999-2000 era at a level comparable to - but slightly higher than - the Cycle 22 maximum smoothed sunspot number of 158.5 [1]. Cycle 22 was the third largest on record. GPS applications have enjoyed unbridled growth through the decline of Cycle 22 in the mid-1990s. The FAA Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) is just one of the programs emerging during the period of benign conditions imposed by the ionosphere. How will the WAAS fare with a more disturbed ionosphere? What conditions is it likely to face as its early design matures to a fully operational system? Some answers to these questions are, at this time, merely speculations. Perhaps the one certainty in all of this, is that interesting times are dead ahead.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1997) September 16 - 19, 1997 Kansas City, MO
Pages:	225 - 230
Cite this article:	Kunches, Joseph M., "Now It Gets Interesting: GPS and the Onset of Solar Cycle 23," Proceedings of the 10th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1997), Kansas City, MO, September 1997, pp. 225-230.
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