The Drying of Titan's Dunes: The Connection between Meteorology, Climate, and Surface Morphology

Details The Drying of Titan's Dunes: The Connection between Meteorology, Climate, and Surface Morphology The Drying of Titan's Dunes: The Connection between Meteorology, Climate, and Surface Morphology

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.5618m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #56.18; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.530

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The Cassini RADAR instrument has observed a striking distribution of terrestrial-like landforms on Titan's surface, notably vast fields of linear sand dunes near the equator (Lorenz et al., Science, 2006) and clusters of irregular hydrocarbon lakes at high northern latitudes (Stofan et al., Nature, 2007). Fluvial channels are also apparent in a variety of styles and locations. Using a general circulation model (Mitchell et al., PNAS, 2006) modified by a surface moisture model, we will demonstrate a mechanism by which the climatology of methane precipitation and evaporation determines the observed confinement of longitudinal dunes to low latitudes. Together with our modeling results, we will demonstrate the observed vertical profile of methane (Niemann et al., Nature, 2005), confinement of lakes to high latitudes (Stofan et al., Nature, 2007), and methane cloud distributions (e.g. Roe et al., ApJ, 2005, Tokano et al., Nature, 2007) suggest most of the methane inventory with direct access to the atmosphere currently resides in the atmosphere, giving a rough estimate for the methane inventory of around ten meters of equivalent liquid methane. This work was funded by NSF grant ATM-0121028.

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