Tidal Winds on Titan Caused by Saturn

Tokano, Tetsuya; Neubauer, F. M.

doi:10.1006/icar.2002.6883

Cited by 96 publications

(91 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The longitudinal nature of the dunes is evident from their interaction with other topography -the dunes break around and rejoin beyond topographic obstacles such as the hills or mountains on the eastern end of T8. Such a morphology requires a fluctuating (typically bidirectional) wind regime - Lorenz et al (2006) suggest that the gravitational tidal winds modeled by Tokano and Neubauer (2002) may be responsible for the variation, although the general trend of the dunes is eastwards, consistent with the zonal winds at high altitudes. A systematic mapping of the dune orientation in future work will be an important constraint on Titan's wind meteorology.…”

Section: Aeolian Featuresmentioning

confidence: 73%

Titan's diverse landscapes as evidenced by Cassini RADAR's third and fourth looks at Titan

Lunine

Elachi

Wall

et al. 2008

Icarus

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Cassini's third and fourth radar flybys, T7 and T8, traversed diverse terrains in the high southern and equatorial latitudes, respectively. The T7 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) swath is somewhat more straightforward to understand in terms of a progressive poleward descent from a high, dissected, and partly hilly terrain down to a low flat plain with embayments and deposits suggestive of the past or even current presence of hydrocarbon liquids. The T8 swath is dominated by dunes of what are likely organic solids, but also contain somewhat enigmatic, probably tectonic, features that may be partly buried or degraded by erosion or relaxation in a thin crust. The dark areas in T7 show no dune morphology, unlike the dark areas in T8, but are composed of a similar material as suggested by a relationship between radar dark/radiometrically warm like that seen in the dunes. The Huygens landing site lies on the edge of the T8 swath; correlation of the radar and Huygens DISR images indicates that to the north of the landing site sit two large longitudinal dunes. Indeed, had the Huygens probe trajectory been just 10 kilometers north of where it actually was, images of large sand dunes would have been returned in place of the fluvially-dissected terrain actually seen-illustrating the strong diversity of Titan's landscapes.4

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Section: Aeolian Featuresmentioning

confidence: 73%

Titan's diverse landscapes as evidenced by Cassini RADAR's third and fourth looks at Titan

Lunine

Elachi

Wall

et al. 2008

Icarus

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“…Using a three-dimensional GCM focused on tropospheric studies, Tokano & Neubauer (2002) show that the gravitational tides induced by Titan's orbit around Saturn in the atmosphere of Titan may have a significant impact on the circulation and temperature structure of the troposphere. Including this process in our GCM requires an extension to a three-dimensional grid.…”

Section: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The coupling of winds, aerosols and chemistry in Titan's atmosphere

Lebonnois

Rannou

Hourdin

2008

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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The atmosphere of Titan is a complex system, where thermal structure, radiative transfer, dynamics, microphysics and photochemistry are strongly coupled together. The global climate model developed over the past 15 years at the Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute has been exploring these different couplings, and has demonstrated how they can help to interpret the observed atmospheric structure of Titan's lower atmosphere (mainly in the stratosphere and troposphere). This review discusses these interactions, and our current understanding of their role in the context of this model, but also of other available works. The recent Cassini results, and the importance of the production mechanisms for Titan's haze, have put forward the need to explore the mesosphere and the couplings between upper and lower atmosphere, as well as the current limits of available models.

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“…Although the radar survey of Titan's surface is not complete, it appears that the linear dunes are ubiquitous in the equatorial region between +30 latitude (Radebaugh et al, 2008), possibly due to Titan's global atmospheric circulation pattern (Lorenz and Radebaugh, 2009;Radebaugh et al, 2008). Interestingly, the slope orientations of the dunes suggests that they are being driven by westerly winds (Lorenz et al, 2006), which is opposite to the wind directions predicted by global climatic models (Tokano and Neubauer, 2002). However, more recent models of global circulation that were integrated over an entire year on Titan suggests that there may be occasionally fast, turbulent westerlies initiated by the equinoctial passage of the intertropical convergence zone around the equator (Tokano, 2010).…”

Section: Titanmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…However, climatic models suggest that the tidal pull by Saturn generates pressure variations in Titan's atmosphere capable of driving near-surface winds (Tokano and Neubauer, 2002). Titan has a methane-rich atmosphere with a surface pressure of *1.5 atm (146.7 kPa); coupled with a low gravity (0.14 g), this results in a threshold windspeed of only *10 cm/s necessary to move an average sand-sized particle (Lancaster, 2006).…”

Section: Titanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aeolian processes on the terrestrial planets

Craddock

2011

Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment

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Aeolian dune fields have been described on Earth, Mars, Venus, and Titan. The amount and fidelity of data being returned from orbiting spacecraft and landers have enabled a new era in aeolian studies. This progress report presents an overview of the latest planetary geomorphic studies characterizing aeolian processes on extraterrestrial surfaces. Our understanding of aeolian processes on other planetary surfaces comes largely from Earth analog studies, along with wind tunnel experiments and theoretical modeling. However, an important difference is that unlike terrestrial dunes most dunes on Venus and Mars are composed primarily of basaltic particles. Additional research is needed to understand how basaltic particles weather both physically and chemically so that it will be possible to apply traditional sedimentological concepts, such as sediment maturity, to understanding aeolian processes on Venus and Mars. It may also be possible to characterize sediment maturity and provenance through remote sensing data once we have a better understanding of basaltic sediments. Although there have been a variety of dune forms identified on the surfaces of the other terrestrial planets, the only dune form found on all of them is linear dunes. Even though linear dunes are the most common dune forms on Earth, we currently have a poor understanding as to how they are formed, and additional work is needed to understand these features.

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Tidal Winds on Titan Caused by Saturn

Cited by 96 publications

References 35 publications

Titan's diverse landscapes as evidenced by Cassini RADAR's third and fourth looks at Titan

Titan's diverse landscapes as evidenced by Cassini RADAR's third and fourth looks at Titan

The coupling of winds, aerosols and chemistry in Titan's atmosphere

Aeolian processes on the terrestrial planets

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