Equatorward Migration of Banded Flows

These plots show the deviations from the mean rotation rate as a function of latitude and time at various depths, clearly showing banded flows migrating towards the equator, corresponding to the torsional oscillation pattern known from surface Doppler measurements. The upper two panels show RLS inversion results at 1% of the solar radius below the surface, for a combination of MDI and GONG (top) and for GONG alone (below). The lower panels show results from OLA inversions of MDI data, at depths of 1%, 5%, 8% and 16% of the solar radius below the surface. The flows penetrate to a depth of at least 8% (56Mm) below the surface, well below the near-surface shear layer. Back to main page.