Mapping the clouds of Titan over 3.5 years with VIMS/Cassini: Implications for Titan climatology

Details Mapping the clouds of Titan over 3.5 years with VIMS/Cassini: Implications for Titan climatology Mapping the clouds of Titan over 3.5 years with VIMS/Cassini: Implications for Titan climatology

Nov 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008sf2a.conf..433r&link_type=abstract

"SF2A-2008: Proceedings of the Annual meeting of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics Eds.: C. Charbonnel, F. Combes

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Scientific paper

The N_2-rich atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon Titan contains a few percent of methane (CH_4) ( te{}Kuiper 1944) which dissociates to produce a plethora of organic compounds, the most abundant of which is ethane (C_2H_6) (Yung et al. 1984; Toublanc et al. 1995). Methane and ethane are involved in a cycle similar to the terrestrial hydrological cycle, including clouds, rain, surface or sub-surface liquids and evaporation (Flasar 1998; Tokano 2001; Rannou et al. 2006). Clouds are visible consequences of meteorological activity on Titan. The Cassini spacecraft, in orbit in the Saturnian system since July 2004, has provided an unprecedented view of Titan's clouds. We present here the first comprehensive map of cloud events, detected from the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer onboard the Cassini spacecraft. We detect more than one hundred and fifty cloud events between July 2004 and December 2007. Three categories of clouds have been identified: 1) bursts of clouds at the south pole, 2) a long lived widespread cloud system at the north pole, and 3) transient temperate clouds centered around 40^oS which may display longitudinal variations. These observations are consistent with control of the cloud spatial distribution dominated by the global atmospheric circulation, possibly combined with some geographic forcing (gravity waves imposed by Saturn's tides and local surface sources of methane), mostly observable at temperate latitudes. Global circulation models (GCM) predict dramatic changes in the cloud activity as Titan's equinox approaches (2009). Such long-term variations should be observed during the extension of the Cassini mission.

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