Phase asynchrony of hemispheric flare activity revisited: empirical mode decomposition and wavelet transform analyses

The phase relation of flare index in the northern and southern hemispheres in the time interval of January 1966 to December 2008 is investigated. It is found that, (1) the flare index in the northern hemisphere begin six months earlier than that in the southern one, which should lead to phase asynchrony between them but with a slight effect; (2) the main periods of the flare activity in the two hemispheres slightly differ from each other, which should also lead to phase asynchrony between them; (3) the low-frequency modes of the flare activity can be used to study the varying relationship of long-term solar activities and the high-frequency modes can be considered as the stochastic component that is amplitude modulated.