Latitudinal gradients of solar wind speed around the ecliptic: Systematic displacement of the streamer belt

Details Latitudinal gradients of solar wind speed around the ecliptic: Systematic displacement of the streamer belt Latitudinal gradients of solar wind speed around the ecliptic: Systematic displacement of the streamer belt

Aug 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002georl..29o..28m&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 29, Issue 15, pp. 28-1, CiteID 1738, DOI 10.1029/2002GL015318

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

8

Interplanetary Physics: Solar Wind Plasma, Interplanetary Physics: Solar Cycle Variations (7536), Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy: Solar Activity Cycle (2162)

Scientific paper

We study the effective latitudinal gradients of the solar wind (SW) speed in the two magnetic hemispheres around the heliographic equator by comparing observations at the Earth's orbit in Spring and Fall since 1964. We find that there is a large, statistically significant effective gradient of about 10 km/s/deg in the southern magnetic hemisphere around each solar minimum. However, no statistically significant effective gradient is found in the northern magnetic hemisphere. This difference implies a systematic displacement of the minimum speed locus of the streamer belt toward the northern magnetic hemisphere. We note that at least during one minimum the streamer belt and the heliospheric current sheet seem to have been oppositely displaced. We also show that the average SW speeds from the two magnetic hemispheres are roughly equal. Therefore, the earlier reported annual variation in SW speed at 1 AU is due to the displacement of the streamer belt and not due to different speeds from coronal holes of opposite polarity. The displacement of the streamer belt implies a new, persistent north-south asymmetry related to the solar magnetic cycle which needs to be explained by realistic solar dynamo models.

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