Review abstract
Nature Geoscience 1, 159 - 164 (2008)
Published online: 17 February 2008 | doi:10.1038/ngeo125
There is an Erratum (April 2008) associated with this Review.
Subject Category: Planetary science
The methane cycle on Titan
Jonathan I. Lunine1,2 & Sushil K. Atreya3
Abstract
Saturn's moon Titan is the second largest natural satellite in the solar system, and the only one that possesses a substantial atmosphere. With a surface temperature of 93.7 K at the equator, Titan's water is almost completely frozen out of the atmosphere; water ice comprises between 35% and 45% of the mass of Titan depending on the interior model. But methane seems to play many of the roles on Titan that water does on Earth: clouds have been observed, fluvial and dendritic features have been imaged suggesting episodic heavy rainfall, and there is compelling but circumstantial evidence for near-polar lakes or seas of methane and its atmospheric photochemical product, ethane. However, whereas Earth possesses a massive global ocean of water, Titan lacks a global methane ocean, and on Titan, low-latitude rainfall appears to be an occasional process limited by the small amount of available solar energy compared with that of Earth. Titan is therefore distinct from the Earth, but is also different from Venus in retaining an active cycle of precipitation and evaporation, and from Mars in the preponderance of active fluvial and pluvial processes in the present day.
- Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA
- Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (INAF), via del Fosso del Cavaliere, 00133 Rome, Italy
- Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2143 USA
Correspondence to: Jonathan I. Lunine1,2 e-mail: jlunine@lpl.arizona.edu
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