DEPENDENCE OF ROTATION VELOCITY OF INDIVIDUAL SUNSPOTS ON THEIR LIFETIME

By using a large number (452) of individual sunspots or individual sunspots with small spots around them, taken from the Greenwich Photoheliographic Results (GPR) for the years 1964–1976 that cover solar cycle No. 20, it is shown that the rotation velocity of the sunspots varies with their lifetimes. This investigation indicates that at the equator, the rotation rate for the last three days (of the lifetime) is about 1.3% slower than that over the whole lifetime and about 0.5% slower than during the first three days, but this is reversed at high and low latitudes, and the difference is much larger in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. These results confirm to the fact that the rotation rate of the solar layers increases with depth.