Statistics – Computation
Scientific paper
Sep 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.2721n&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #27.21; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.531
Statistics
Computation
Scientific paper
TitanWRF is the Titan version of the PlanetWRF model, which is a global, planetary version of the mesoscale, Earth-based WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting) model (www.wrf-model.org). It uses a full radiative transfer scheme (a more recent version of that described in McKay, Pollack and Courtin, "The Thermal Structure of Titan's Atmosphere", Icarus 1989) including diurnal and seasonal variations in solar forcing, and is fully three-dimensional allowing waves and their effect on the mean flow to be represented explicitly. This required us to use a computationally efficient model - Titan's thick sluggish atmosphere has very long dynamical time-scales, and a Titan year is 30 Earth years, meaning that long simulations are needed to `spin up’ the model atmosphere. PlanetWRF was therefore an excellent choice, as its basis (the WRF model) was designed to run efficiently on parallel machines, such as the new 1024 node Geological and Planetary Sciences Dell cluster, CITerra, available to us at Caltech.
We will present results from the latter stages of model spin-up, and show that the model atmosphere (having been started from rest) takes many Titan years to reach an equilibrium state in which there is no net transfer of angular momentum from surface to atmosphere when averaged over one year. We will also show that our model begins to produce significant equatorial super-rotation after several years, and will identify the mechanism behind this in TitanWRF. Validation of the equilibrium model state is our next step once it is available, but we will also outline future plans after this has been accomplished. These include allowing advection of the radiatively active haze distribution by model winds, and the inclusion of simple methane microphysics to study cloud formation in Titan's lower atmosphere.
This work is funded by NASA's AISR and OPR research programs.
Inada A.
Newman Claire
Richardson Mark I.
Xiao Jiang
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