Babcock-Leighton mechanism (source code)

= Babcock-Leighton mechanism
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The Babcock-Leighton mechanism regenerates large-scale poloidal solar flux through the emergence and dispersal of systematically tilted bipolar active regions. With <Joy's law> tilt, opposite polarities have different latitudes: cancellation near the equator and poleward transport of surviving following-polarity flux alter and reverse the polar field. Thus a toroidal field that produces rising bipolar regions feeds back into a <poloidal magnetic field>. The source is intrinsically nonlocal between the interior flux reservoir and surface emergence and is stochastic because active-region fluxes and tilts vary.