Titan's Carbon Budget and the Case of the Missing Ethane

Details Titan's Carbon Budget and the Case of the Missing Ethane Titan's Carbon Budget and the Case of the Missing Ethane

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009jpca..11311221w&link_type=abstract

The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, vol. 113, no. 42, pp. 11221-11226

Mathematics

Logic

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Scientific paper

The retrieval of data from the Cassini-Huygens mission has revealed much about Titan's atmospheric-surface system and has precipitated more questions. One of these questions involves the lack of large reservoirs of ethane that were predicted by a variety of studies prior to the arrival of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft. Using an updated and comprehensive photochemical model, we examine the nature of Titan's carbon budget, initiated by the destruction of methane, and the role that ethane condensation plays in this budget. Model results show that 40% of methane destruction results in ethane formation, with a net production rate of 2.7 × 109 molecules cm-2 s-1, due primarily to acetylenic catalysis in Titan's stratosphere. This corresponds to a liquid ethane layer of several hundred meters over geologic time. However, episodic methane outgassing, subsurface sequestration, and chemical processing of Titan's surface are likely responsible for the limiting of ethane condensate on Titan's surface to less than 10 m globally averaged.

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