Journal article
The formation and evolution of Titan’s winter polar vortex
- Abstract:
- Saturn’s largest moon Titan has a substantial nitrogen-methane atmosphere, with strong seasonal effects, including formation of winter polar vortices. Following Titan’s 2009 northern spring equinox, peak solar heating moved to the northern hemisphere, initiating south-polar subsidence and winter polar vortex formation. Throughout 2010–2011, strengthening subsidence produced a mesospheric hot-spot and caused extreme enrichment of photochemically produced trace gases. However, in 2012 unexpected and rapid mesospheric cooling was observed. Here we show extreme trace gas enrichment within the polar vortex dramatically increases mesospheric long-wave radiative cooling efficiency, causing unusually cold temperatures 2–6 years post-equinox. The long time-frame to reach a stable vortex configuration results from the high infrared opacity of Titan’s trace gases and the relatively long atmospheric radiative time constant. Winter polar hot-spots have been observed on other planets, but detection of post-equinox cooling is so far unique to Titan.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 2.1MB, Terms of use)
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(Supplementary materials, zip, 321.1KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-017-01839-z
Authors
+ Science and Technology Facilities Council
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/057g20z61
+ National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/027ka1x80
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 8
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 1586
- Publication date:
- 2017-11-21
- Acceptance date:
- 2017-10-18
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2041-1723
- ISSN:
-
2041-1723
- Pmid:
-
29162820
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
pubs:803118
- UUID:
-
uuid:675cd85a-03fb-48e6-afff-cb35982be03a
- Local pid:
-
pubs:803118
- Source identifiers:
-
803118
- Deposit date:
-
2018-01-09
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Teanby et al
- Copyright date:
- 2017
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2017. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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