Thermal Structure of Titan's Stratosphere from Cassini CIRS Limb Observations

Details Thermal Structure of Titan's Stratosphere from Cassini CIRS Limb Observations Thermal Structure of Titan's Stratosphere from Cassini CIRS Limb Observations

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.2712a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #27.12; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.529

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

During the first two years of the Cassini tour of the Saturn system, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) has performed six limb mapping observations designed for measuring stratospheric temperatures. Each of these observations covered a 30° to 90° arc of the limb from near the surface to 500 km altitude at 5 degree latitude intervals, over the spectral range from 600 to 1400 cm-1 (16.7 to 7.1 μm) with an apodised spectral resolution of 15.5 cm-1 and a vertical spatial resolution between 30 and 50 km.
Because the vertical extent of Titan's atmosphere is not small compared to Titan's radius, horizontal temperature gradients cannot be ignored when modeling the observed radiances from limb observations. Therefore, we have developed a two-dimensional retrieval model that solves for temperature as a function of both altitude and latitude, assuming no zonal temperature variations, from limb observations at multiple latitudes and altitudes. Using data from the methane ν4 band gives us the temperature between roughly 0.005 and 5 mbar.
Preliminary results are roughly consistent with results of nadir viewing observations (Flasar et al., Science, 308, 975, 2005) between 0.5 and 5 mbar where both results are valid, with the warmest temperatures at the equator, and much stronger meridional temperature gradients in the northern (winter) hemisphere than in the southern. At higher altitudes not probed by nadir viewing, the limb data reveal that the the stratopause is nearly 30K warmer, in the northern polar regions than at the equator and southern hemisphere. Furthermore, the altitude of the stratopause shifts from 0.1 mbar (300 km) near the equator to 0.01 mbar (400 km) poleward of about 40°N.

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