Related papers: Titan's transport-driven methane cycle
We apply a 1D upper atmosphere model to study thermal escape of nitrogen over Titan's history. Significant thermal escape should have occurred very early for solar EUV fluxes 100 to 400 times higher than today with escape rates as high as…
Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, has a thick atmosphere dominated by nitrogen and methane. The dense orange-brown smog hiding the satellite's surface is produced by photochemical reactions of methane, nitrogen and their dissociation…
With the Cassini-Huygens Mission in orbit around Saturn, the large moon Titan, with its reducing atmosphere, rich organic chemistry, and heterogeneous surface, moves into the astrobiological spotlight. Environmental conditions on Titan and…
Water vapour is delivered to Saturn's stratosphere by Enceladus' plumes and subsequent diffusion in the planet system. It is expected to condense into a haze in the middle stratosphere. The hot stratospheric vortex (the `beacon') that…
We first discuss how the flux transport dynamo with reasonably high diffusion can explain both the regular and the irregular features of the solar cycle quite well. Then we critically examine the inadequacies of the model and the challenge…
The dynamics of the outer regular satellites of Saturn are driven primarily by the outward migration of Titan, but several independent constraints on Titan's migration are difficult to reconcile with the current resonant orbit of the small…
Simulations of Titan's atmospheric transmission and surface reflectivity have been developed in order to estimate how Titan's atmosphere and surface properties could affect performances of the Cassini radar experiment. In this paper we…
Numerous geological features that could be evaporitic in origin have been identified on the surface of Titan. Although they seem to be water-ice poor, their main properties -chemical composition, thickness, stratification- are essentially…
The Ice Giants Uranus and Neptune have hydrogen-based atmospheres with several constituents that condense in their cold upper atmospheres. A small number of bright cloud systems observed in both planets are good candidates for moist…
Galactic outflows produced by stellar feedback are known to be multiphase in nature. Both observations and simulations indicate that the material within several kpc of galactic disk mid-planes consists of warm clouds embedded within a hot…
We present evidence for condensed phase methane precipitation near Xanadu using nine nights of observations from the SINFONI integral-field spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope and imaging analysis with empirical surface subtraction.…
The atmospheric circulation in Venus is well known to exhibit strong super-rotation. However, the atmospheric mechanisms responsible for the formation of this super-rotation are still not fully understood. In this work, we developed a new…
Within the Babcock-Leighton framework for the solar dynamo, the strength of a cycle is expected to depend on the strength of the dipole moment or net hemispheric flux during the preceding minimum, which depends on how much flux was present…
Saturn's moon Titan exhibits remarkable parallels to the Earth in many geophysical and geological processes not found elsewhere in the solar system at the present day. These include a nitrogen atmosphere with a condensible gas - methane -…
Destabilization of the water cycle threatens human lives and livelihoods. Meanwhile our understanding of whether and how changes in vegetation cover could trigger abrupt transitions in moisture regimes remains incomplete. This challenge…
The North Atlantic Ocean circulation, fuelled by winds and surface buoyancy fluxes, carries 1.25 PettaWatts of heat poleward in the subtropics, and helps in regulating global weather and climate patterns. Here, we assess the relative…
Venus and Earth are similar in bulk properties yet followed dramatically different climatic trajectories. Reconstructing Venus's climate evolution requires understanding how rotation, obliquity, eccentricity, and solar luminosity shaped…
In hot and ultra-hot Jupiters, stellar irradiation is a primary driver of atmospheric circulation and the wave structures that sustain it. We aim to investigate how variations in radiative and dynamical timescales influence global flow…
We use solar occultations observed by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer aboard the Cassini Spacecraft to extract the 1 to 5 micron transmission spectrum of Saturn, as if it were a transiting exoplanet. We detect absorption from…
High altitude clouds and hazes are integral to understanding exoplanet observations, and are proposed to explain observed featureless transit spectra. However, it is difficult to make inferences from these data because of the need to…