Abstract
Abstract The Maunder butterfly pattern is the most complete spatial-temporal representation of observed changes in solar activity in the 11-year cycle over a period of 12–24 cycle. The well-known empirical relation is used to transform Greenwich sunspot areas into magnetic flux, and the distances between the butterfly wings are then calculated with the Fisher–Rao metric. We found that the similarities or differences in the patterns of the individual butterfly wings in this metric are approximately the same for each hemisphere. The wings were the closest for a sequence of strong cycles, while there is a tendency for a series of weak cycles to form cycles in pairs with the implementation of an analog of the Gnevyshev–Olya rule.