Publications by authors named "Robert Leamon"

The Sun provides the energy required to sustain life on Earth and drive our planet's atmospheric circulation. However, establishing a solid physical connection between solar and tropospheric variability has posed a considerable challenge. The canon of solar variability is derived from the 400 years of observations that demonstrates the waxing and waning number of sunspots over an 11(-ish) year period.

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As the observational signature of the footprints of solar magnetic field lines open into the heliosphere, coronal holes provide a critical measure of the structure and evolution of these lines. Using a combination of (SOHO/EIT), (SDO/AIA), and (STEREO/EUVI A/B) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) observations spanning 1996 - 2015 (nearly two solar cycles), coronal holes are automatically detected and characterized. Coronal hole area distributions show distinct behavior in latitude, defining the domain of polar and low-latitude coronal holes.

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Solar magnetism displays a host of variational timescales of which the enigmatic 11-year sunspot cycle is most prominent. Recent work has demonstrated that the sunspot cycle can be explained in terms of the intra- and extra-hemispheric interaction between the overlapping activity bands of the 22-year magnetic polarity cycle. Those activity bands appear to be driven by the rotation of the Sun's deep interior.

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