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Accurate knowledge of time variation in meridional flow speed and profile is crucial for estimating the solar cycle's features, which are ultimately responsible for causing space climate variations. However, no consensus has been reached yet about the Sun's meridional circulation pattern observations and theories. By implementing an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) data assimilation in a Babcock‐Leighton solar dynamo model using Data Assimilation Research Testbed framework, we find that the best reconstruction of time variation in meridional flow speed can be obtained when 10 or more observations are used with an updating time of 15 days and a ≤10% observational error. Increasing ensemble size from 16 to 160 improves reconstruction. Comparison of reconstructed flow speed with “true state” reveals that EnKF data assimilation is very powerful for reconstructing meridional flow speeds and suggests that it can be implemented for reconstructing spatiotemporal patterns of meridional circulation. Reconstruction of meridional flow speed variationPowerfulness of EnKF data assimilation approachProgress on finding spatiotemporal pattern of meridional circulation

We use three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of the helically forced magnetohydrodynamic equations in spherical shell segments in order to study the effects of changes in the geometrical shape and size of the domain on the growth and saturation of large-scale magnetic fields. We inject kinetic energy along with kinetic helicity in spherical domains via helical forcing using Chandrasekhar-Kendall functions. We take perfect conductor boundary conditions for the magnetic field to ensure that no magnetic helicity escapes the domain boundaries. We find dynamo action giving rise to magnetic fields at scales larger than the characteristic scale of the forcing. The magnetic energy exceeds the kinetic energy over dissipative timescales, similar to that seen earlier in Cartesian simulations in periodic boxes. As we increase the size of the domain in the azimuthal direction, we find that the nonlinearly saturated magnetic field organizes itself in long-lived cellular structures with aspect ratios close to unity. These structures tile the domain along the azimuthal direction, thus resulting in very small longitudinally averaged magnetic fields for large domain sizes. The scales of these structures are determined by the smallest scales of the domain, which in our simulations is usually the radial scale. We also find that increasing the meridional extent of the domains produces little qualitative change, except a marginal increase in the large-scale field. We obtain qualitatively similar results in Cartesian domains with similar aspect ratios.