Meridional flows during the solar minimum and maximum years are derived using 14 years of SOHO/MDI data. The flows changed significantly from the minimum to the maximum, and major changes were associated with the active latitudes.
Recent discoveries suggest that Sun-like stars experience a fundamental shift in their rotation and magnetism around middle-age. We have now identified this transition in the best available data on stellar cycles.
Using a combination of the magnetograms, we find signs of the beginning of the 25th cycle from both HMI and WSO by calculating the inclination angles determined from the variation in line of sight field during a disk passage.
The F10.7 microwave flux shows remarkabke agreement with the unsigned magnetic flux from MDI and HMI over the past 20 years, attesting to the accuracy and significance of both.
Surface flux transport model suggests that the weak Cycle 24 is mainly caused by a number of bigger bipolar regions emerging at low latitudes with a “wrong” north-south orientation.
Solar inter-network magnetic field, the weakest component of the solar magnetism, seems to be invariant at ~10 G from the minimum to the maximum phase of Cycle 24. This suggests a possible origin of small-scale, local dynamo.
HMI observations reveal a slow, north-south asymmetric polar magnetic field reversal. Cycle 24 has been weak; an even weaker Cycle 25 seems probable.
Our results show that raising the source surface height 15-30% during solar minimum (depending on the model used) better reproduces the observed IMF open flux from OMNI. We used two different PFSS models and the MDI/HMI magnetograms as input.
I investigate the possible long term decrease in umbral magnetic field strengths from 1998-2006. Whereas a decrease of 800 Gauss in umbral magnetic fields has been reported between 1998 and 2012, the HMI and MDI data indicate a decrease of only around 300 Gauss. The continuing availability of the excellent HMI data set will allow us to continue to refine this study as solar cycle 24 evolves.