tokens: 1997, would not be significantly contaminated by magnetic activity during a minimum. While active region inflows were not discovered at this time, the authors were still aware that magnetic activity would affect the results. Nevertheless, during this observation window, cycle 23 was ascending and the monthly sunspot number was growing from 10 to 45 (see Fig. 1 ). We investigated a similar period in cycle 24 (2009, one year after Fig. 7 ) and found inflows into active regions that persisted for a number of months. These inflows are at a weaker level than in Fig. 6 and, after three rotations, have a spatial correlation coefficient of 0.25. The EW component of these inflows is what is observed in the correlation functions of Beck et al. (1998) . We note that there is a very small window (one year centered at the minimum) in which inflows do not dominate the low-latitude flow field. Interestingly, the studies of Labonte et al. (1981) and Snodgrass Howard (1984) did not report on these long-time correlations, despite the data covering cycles 20 and 21 and the supposed sensitivity of ∼1 m s −1 per wavenumber. The reported observations from Beck et al. (1998) are consistent with ours, with the exception that they incorrectly identified the large velocity cells as convective in origin. Specifically, the EW correlations have an e-folding lifetime of approximately four months, and the extent of the flows is greater in the longitude direction. Beck et al. (1998) reported EW flows elongated in longitude with an aspect ratio greater than four. We also find EW flows elongated in longitudes, however with an aspect ratio around two (Fig. 6 ). We attribute this difference to the averaging scheme. We were careful to avoid selecting large converging flow features multiple times to avoid smearing, thus our aspect ratio is smaller. The elongation of the spatial correlation of EW flows in the longitudinal direction is not surprising given the geometry of active regions. In an argument against the convective nature of these cells, Ulrich (2001) suggested that the long-lived signals in the EW flows might be due to Rossby or inertial waves. The solar equatorial Rossby waves, discovered and subsequently characterized, are not seen in the EW flow maps at low latitudes and thus cannot cause the signals originally observed by Beck et al. (1998) and Ulrich (2001) . We find that the active region inflows generate a flow pattern with azimuthal modes up to m = 9, which is consistent with the spectral analysis of Ulrich (2001) . Ulrich (2001) found that while the rotational frequencies of these modes were consistent with magnetic features, a couple modes were slower. However, in our study, we find that, at each latitude, all modes have frequencies consistent with the rotational frequency of magnetic features and that they are absent during the solar minimum, thus indicating a magnetic association for these signals. Aware of the potential affect in Doppler images, Ulrich
ner_tags: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Identifier I-Identifier O O O O O B-CelestialObjectRegion O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Identifier I-Identifier O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Citation I-Citation I-Citation I-Citation O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Citation I-Citation I-Citation I-Citation O B-Citation I-Citation I-Citation O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Citation I-Citation I-Citation I-Citation O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Citation I-Citation I-Citation I-Citation O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Citation I-Citation O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Citation I-Citation I-Citation I-Citation O B-Citation I-Citation O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Formula I-Formula I-Formula O O O O O O O O B-Citation I-Citation O B-Citation I-Citation O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O B-Citation