Titan, Saturn's largest moon, can seem like Earth viewed through a funhouse mirror. Far colder than our home, water on the surface exists only in a frozen state, while its liquid lakes and clouds are made of methane, and there's an apparent methane cycle playing the role of our water cycle. Now, a detailed model suggests that daily and yearly variations in the moon's temperature may produce distinct layers in the lowest region of Titan's atmosphere, similar to stratification seen in Earth's troposphere.
Benjamin Charnay and Sébastien Lebonnois of the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique in Paris, France have developed a three-dimensional general circulation model (GCM) of Titan's thick atmosphere. Based on data from the Huygens lander and Cassini radio data, the model shows a weak amount of convection, varying over the course of Titan's day. As Saturn is much farther from the Sun than Earth is, the difference between day and night on Titan is comparatively small, but the amount of surface heating in the researchers' model is sufficient to drive cloud formation and wind patterns.
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