Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003agufm.p51c0465o&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2003, abstract #P51C-0465
Other
0300 Atmospheric Composition And Structure, 5700 Planetology: Fluid Planets, 5704 Atmospheres: Composition And Chemistry, 5757 Remote Sensing
Scientific paper
Several years of observations of Saturn, obtained primarily at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, establish a baseline against which data from the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) and other remote-sensing instruments can be compared. Thermal emission at 5.2 μ m, sensitive to clouds near and above the 2--3 bar level, finds them to be strikingly inhomogeneous with large zonal variations near the equator and 45oS. At longer wavelengths, stratospheric temperatures near 10 mbar are sensed by 7.85-μ m CH4 emission and (with C2H6 abundance variations sensed by 12.2 μ m C2H6 emission). Trosospheric temperatures near 100--400 mbar are sensed by H2 collision-induced emission between 17 and 24 μ m. Strong seasonal forcing of stratospheric temperatures is evident, with temperatures tracking the insolation variations with little time delay, inconsistent with purely radiative equilibrium condistions. Stratospheric temperature (or C2H6 abundance) peaked sharply poleward of 81oS latitude in a high-resolution Keck image in 1998. Meridional variations of stratospheric and tropospheric temperature are not strongly correlated with one another. Planetary-scale zonal waves as large as 1 Kelvin amplitude are seen in the stratospheric temperature field, with some evidence for even larger-amplitude waves in the troposphere. Similar to vortices in Titan and Jupiter, we might expect Cassini to detect a polar vortex (e.g. a region of depressed temperatures with a sinusoidal boundary), if driven by the seasonal loss of insolation poleward of its arctic circle. This work was supported by funds from NASA to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and the Goddard Space Flight Center. Brett Beach-Kimball was supported by the Undergraduate Student Researcher Program (USRP); Brian Jackson was supported by JPL as a Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow.
Baines Kevin
Beach-Kimball B.
Fisher Benji
Gezari Dan
Jackson Bailey
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