This author suggests the concept of a new technology for global detection (GLOBDET) of atmospheric disturbances of natural and technogenic origin, on the basis of phase measurements of the total electron content (TEC) in the ionosphere using an international GPS network. Temporal dependencies of TEC are obtained for a set of spaced receivers of the GPS network simultaneously for the entire set of visible (over a given time interval) GPS satellites (up to 5--10 satellites). These series are subjected to filtering in the selected range of oscillation periods using algorithms for spatiotemporal analysis of signals of nonequidistant GPS phased antenna arrays which are adequate to the detected disturbance. An analysis is made of the possibilities of using the GLOBDET when detecting the ionospheric response of solar flares. In this case it is best to make the coherent summation of the filtered series of TEC. Powerful impulsive flares of July 29, 1999, and December 28, 1999, were chosen to illustrate the practical implementation of the proposed method. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union