Could magnetic flows cause sunspot lows

A new study may explain why the solar minimum lasted an extra 15 months and may help predict the duration and severity of future solar cycles.

Science News says David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Lisa Rightmire of the University of Memphis in Tennessee analyzed 13 years of SOHO measurements that tracked the movement of ionized gas from the solar equator to the poles.

The researchers found that the relatively slow gas movement, known as the meridional flow, sped up a few years before the last solar minimum began in 2008.
What’s more, the flow was substantially faster than the speed at the previous solar minimum, a more typical and less extended downturn in solar activity some 11 years earlier.

Hathaway and Rightmire suggest that the faster meridional flow produced weaker magnetic fields at the sun’s poles, which extended the solar minimum.

Read the full Science News story 'Magnetic flows cause sunspot lows, study shows'
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57180/title/
Magnetic_flows_cause_sunspot_lows,_study_shows

What In The World Is The Sun Up To Now?
http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1835884/
what_in_the_world_is_the_sun_up_to_now/

Science Magazine
http://www.sciencemag.org/