Hydrodynamic Properties of the Sun's Giant Cellular Flows

Measurements of the large cellular flows on the Sun were made by local correlation tracking of features (supergranules) seen in full-disk Doppler images obtained by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) instrument on the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite. Several improvements made to the local correlation tracking method allowed for more precise measurements of these flows. Measurements were made hourly over the nearly ten years of the mission-to-date. A four-hour time-lag between images was determined to give the best results as a compromise between increased feature displacement and decreased feature evolution. The hourly measurements were averaged over the 34 days that it takes to observe all longitudes at all latitudes to produce daily maps of the latitudinal and longitudinal velocities. Analyses of these flow maps reveal many interesting characteristics of these large cellular flows. While flows at all latitudes are largely in the form of vortices with left-handed helicity in the north and right-handed helicity in the south, there are key distinctions between the low-latitude and high-latitude cells. The low-latitude cells have roughly circular shapes, lifetimes of about one month, rotate nearly rigidly, do not drift in latitude, and do not exhibit any correlation between longitudinal and latitudinal flow. The high-latitude cells have long extensions that spiral inward toward the poles and can wrap nearly completely around the Sun. They have lifetimes of several months, rotate differentially with latitude, drift poleward at speeds approaching 2 m s(-1), and have a strong correlation between prograde and equatorward flows. Spherical harmonic spectral analyses of maps of the divergence and curl of the flows confirm that the flows are dominated by the curl component with rms velocities of about 12 m s(-1) at wavenumber l = 10. Fourier transforms in time over 1024 daily records of the spherical harmonic spectra indicate two notable components-an m = l feature representing the low-latitude component and an m = 1 feature representing the high-latitude component. The dispersion relation for the low-latitude component is well represented by that derived for Rossby waves or r-modes. The high-latitude component has a constant temporal frequency for all l indicating features advected by differential rotation at rates representative of the base of the convection zone high latitudes. The poleward motions of these features further suggest that the high-latitude meridional flow at the base of the convection zone is poleward-not equatorward.

Automated summary

Measurements of large cellular flows on the Sun reveal key distinctions between low-latitude and high-latitude cells, with the former having circular shapes, shorter lifetimes, and rigid rotation, while the latter exhibit elongated shapes, longer lifetimes, and differential rotation. These flows are dominated by the curl component with rms velocities of about 12 m s(-1), with low-latitude and high-latitude components represented by different spectral features.