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Detailed study of the solar magnetic field is crucial to understand its generation, transport, and reversals. The timing of the reversals may have implications on space weather and thus identification of the temporal behaviour of the critical surges that lead to the polar field reversals is important. We analyse the evolution of solar activity and magnetic flux transport in Cycles 21–24. We identify critical surges of remnant flux that reach the Sun's poles and lead to the polar field reversals. We reexamine the polar field build-up and reversals in their causal relation to the Sun's low-latitude activity. We further identify the major remnant flux surges and their sources in the time-latitude aspect. We find that special characteristics of individual 11-yr cycles are generally determined by the spatiotemporal organization of emergent magnetic flux and its unusual properties. We find a complicated restructuring of high-latitude magnetic fields in Cycle 21. The global rearrangements of solar magnetic fields were caused by surges of trailing and leading polarities that occurred near the activity maximum. The decay of non-Joy and anti-Hale active regions resulted in the remnant flux surges that disturbed the usual order in magnetic flux transport. We finally show that the leading-polarity surges during cycle minima sometimes link the following cycle and a collective effect of these surges may lead to secular changes in the solar activity. The magnetic field from a Babcock–Leighton dynamo model generally agrees with these observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polar crown filaments (PCFs) are formed above the polarity inversion line, which separates unipolar polar fields and the nearest dispersed fields. They are important features in studying solar polar fields and their cyclical variations. Due to the relatively weak field strength and projection effects, measuring polar magnetic fields is more difficult than obtaining the field strengths concentrated in active regions at lower latitudes. "Rush-to-the-pole" of PCFs represent the progress of unipolar polar fields from the previous solar cycle being canceled by the dispersed fields generated in the current cycle. Such progress is a good indicator of the polarity reversal in the polar areas and a precursor for the solar maximum. In this study, PCFs are identified from a 100 yr archive, covering cycles 16–24. This archive consists of full-disk Hα images obtained from the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Kanzelhöhe Solar Observatory, and Big Bear Solar Observatory. The poleward migration speeds are measured and show an obvious asymmetry in the northern and southern hemispheres. In addition, our results show that the PCFs usually reach their highest latitudes first in the northern hemisphere, except cycle 17. Similarly, previous studies show that the magnetic field reversed first at the north pole in six out of nine cycles. We also compare the temporal variations of PCF migration and the latitude gradient factor of the differential rotation, which shows a trend in the southern hemisphere. Moreover, the migration speed of PCFs does not seem to be well correlated with the maximum sunspot numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is believed that the tilt in the bipolar magnetic regions (BMRs) is produced due to a torque induced by the Coriolis force, acting on the diverging flow from the apex of the rising flux tube of the toroidal field in the solar convection zone (SCZ).The BMRs with a strong magnetic field are expected to have reduced tilt as they rise very quickly in the SCZ. This effect can provide the required nonlinear quenching mechanism to suppress the growth of magnetic filed in the dynamo models. Here, we use the magnetograms of the Michelson Doppler Imager (1996–2011) and Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (2010–2018) to automatically detect the BMRs and look for the signature of tilt quenching. Based on the Bayesian inference method, our results show that the posterior distribution of quenching parameters is Gaussian, and the mean of this distribution agrees with the earlier findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using different proxies of solar activity, we have studied the following features of the solar cycle: i) The linear correlation between the amplitude of cycle and its decay rate, ii) the linear correlation between the amplitude of cycle $n$ and the decay rate of cycle $(n - 1)$, and iii) the anti-correlation between the amplitude of cycle $n$ and the period of cycle $(n - 1)$. Features ii) and iii) are very useful because they provide precursors for future cycles. We have reproduced these features using a flux-transport dynamo model with stochastic fluctuations in the Babcock-Leighton $\alpha$ effect and in the meridional circulation. Only when we introduce fluctuations in meridional circulation, are we able to reproduce different observed features of the solar cycle. We discuss the possible reasons for these correlations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the long-term behaviour of the sunspot penumbra to umbra area ratio by analysing recently digitised Kodaikanal white-light data (1923 – 2011). We implement an automatic umbra extraction method and compute the ratio over eight solar cycles (Cycles 16 – 23). Although the average ratio does not show any variation with spot latitudes, cycle phases and strengths, it increases from 5.5 to 6 as the sunspot size increases from 100 μhem to 2000 μhem. Interestingly, our analysis also reveals that this ratio for smaller sunspots (area < 100 μhem) does not have any long-term systematic trend as was earlier reported from the photographic results of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (RGO). To verify the same, we apply our automated extraction technique to Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)/Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) continuum images (1996 – 2010). Results from this data not only confirm our previous findings, but they also show the robustness of our analysis method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent dedicated Hinode polar region campaigns revealed the presence of concentrated kilogauss patches of the magnetic field in the polar regions of the Sun, which are also shown to be correlated with facular bright points at the photospheric level. In this work, we demonstrate that this spatial intermittency of the magnetic field persists even up to the chromospheric heights. The small-scale bright elements visible in the bright network lanes of the solar network structure as seen in the Ca ii H images are termed network bright points. We use special Hinode campaigns devoted to the observation of polar regions of the Sun to study the polar network bright points during the phase of the last extended solar minimum. We use Ca ii H images of chromosphere observed by the Solar Optical Telescope. For magnetic field information, level-2 data of the spectro-polarimeter is used. We observe a considerable association between the polar network bright points and magnetic field concentrations. The intensity of such bright points is found to be correlated well with the photospheric magnetic field strength underneath with a linear relation existing between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]