Comparison of Large-Scale Flows on the Sun Measured by Time-Distance Helioseismology and Local Correlation Tracking

We present a direct comparison between two different techniques: time-distance helioseismology and a local correlation tracking method for measuring mass flows in the solar photosphere and in a near-surface layer. We applied both methods to the same dataset (MDI high-cadence Dopplergrams covering almost the entire Carrington rotation 1974) and compared the results. We found that, after necessary corrections, the vector flow fields obtained by these techniques are very similar. The median difference between directions of corresponding vectors is 24°, and the correlation coefficients of the results for mean zonal and meridional flows are 0.98 and 0.88, respectively. The largest discrepancies are found in areas of small velocities where the inaccuracies of the computed vectors play a significant role. The good agreement of these two methods increases confidence in the reliability of large-scale synoptic maps obtained by them.