This contribution to "Solar Magnetic Variability and Climate" reviews small-scale magnetic features on the solar surface, in particular the strong-field but tiny magnetic concentrations that constitute network and plage and represent most magnetism outside sunspots and filaments. Where these are mostly of the same polarity, as in active-region plage, their occurrence varies with the activity variations measured by the sunspot number, but when they appear bipolar-mixed on small scales they can also result from granular-scale dynamo action that does not vary with the cycle.
Categories: astro-ph.SR