The TitanWRF Model at the end of the Cassini Prime Mission.

Details The TitanWRF Model at the end of the Cassini Prime Mission. The TitanWRF Model at the end of the Cassini Prime Mission.

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p12a..02n&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P12A-02

Mathematics

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0343 Planetary Atmospheres (5210, 5405, 5704), 3346 Planetary Meteorology (5445, 5739), 5210 Planetary Atmospheres, Clouds, And Hazes (0343), 5405 Atmospheres (0343, 1060), 5445 Meteorology (3346)

Scientific paper

TitanWRF is a global model of Titan's atmosphere from the surface to about 400km, adapted from the Earth- based, limited area WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model that is used extensively in terrestrial weather prediction. Work on TitanWRF began close to the start of the Cassini mission, and we will present the TitanWRF results most influenced by and relevant to Cassini observations. Although Cassini has monitored Titan for less than a third of a Titan year, it has greatly increased our knowledge of how its general circulation changes with time. Cassini CIRS provides observations of zonal mean temperatures and inferred zonal winds, adding significantly to the coverage provided by the pre- existing Voyager dataset. Notable features are the strong equatorial superrotation (also observed directly by the Huygens probe) and large temperature gradients in the winter stratosphere. These proved difficult for TitanWRF to fully reproduce, but we will present and discuss new results showing a far better match to observations. Tropospheric methane cycle experiments in TitanWRF were first motivated by ground- then Cassini-based cloud observations, and more recently by Cassini's detection of surface lakes. This enables us to test our predictions of where and when cloud formation and precipitation should occur, and we will present our latest results and predictions of what to expect next. Huygens measured tropospheric wind speeds and directions for just one location and time of year, but Cassini radar observations of what are assumed to be aeolian dune fields may allow us to infer more about the dominant surface wind directions for a range of locations. We will compare our predictions with the measured winds from Huygens and inferred wind directions from Cassini, and discuss the impact of tides due to Saturn's gravity in the TitanWRF model. This work is funded by NASA's Outer Planets Research Program and Planetary Atmospheres Research Program, and our simulations were performed on the CITerra cluster in the Geological and Planetary Sciences division at Caltech.

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