LAUSR

The north–south (N–S) asymmetry of solar activity is a known statistical phenomenon, but its significance is difficult to prove or to explain theoretically. Here we consider each solar hemisphere as a separate dynamical system connected with the other hemisphere via an unknown coupling parameter. We use a nonlinear dynamics approach to calculate the scale-dependent conditional dispersion (CD) of sunspots between hemispheres. Using daily Greenwich sunspot areas, we calculate the Neumann and Pearson chi-squared distances between CDs as indices showing the direction of coupling. We introduce an additional index of synchronization that shows the strength of coupling and allows us to distinguish between complete synchronization and independency of hemispheres. All indices are evaluated in a four-year moving window showing the evolution of coupling between hemispheres. We find that the driver-response interrelation changes between hemispheres have a few pulses during 130 years of Greenwich data with an at least 40-year-long period of unidirectional coupling. These sharp nearly simultaneous pulses of all causality indices are found at the decay of some 11-year cycles. The pulse rate of this new phenomenon of dynamic coupling is irregular: although the first two pulses repeat after the 22-year Hale cycles, the last two pulses repeat after three and four 11-year cycles, respectively. The last pulse occurs at the decay phase of Cycle 23, which means that the next pulse will likely appear during the decay of the future Cycle 25 or later. This new phenomenon of dynamic coupling reveals additional constraints for understanding and modeling the long-term behavior of solar activity cycles.