Modeling Helioseismic Signatures of Meridional Circulation

We present the application of a new 3D global linearized acoustic algorithm (GALE). With the wide variance of inferred profiles of meridional circulation currently being made from similar observational data, we choose a "forward-modeling" approach to test the helioseismic signatures generated by several physics-based mean-field models of meridional velocities. We simulate the effect of realization noise in measurements in order to place a low-end baseline for whether it is possible to see the difference between single- and double-cell meridional circulation. With minimal parameter changes between the two regimes we show that it may not be possible two distinguish these profiles within the operational time-frame of HMI. We also test several other profiles in an attempt to use mean-field theory to help constrain inferences made through helioseismology inversions.