Titan's big rainstorms Options

[ngunn]

Here is an interesting-sounding paper getting into the nitty gritty of how big convective storm systems on Titan might work and look. I particularly recommend the animations of various storm scenarios in the Supporting Materials. Factor out the different vertical and horizontal scales and you might almost be standing there with your umbrella on the point of collapse - or blown inside out.

https://secure.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/secu...MePresent=false

[atomoid]

interesting read on physx.org modeling suggests big apparently seasonal storms dump over a foot of 'rain' a day.. Extreme methane rainstorms appear to have a key role in shaping Titan's icy surface

[rlorenz]

interesting read on physx.org modeling suggests big apparently seasonal storms dump over a foot of 'rain' a day.. Extreme methane rainstorms appear to have a key role in shaping Titan's icy surface

Yes, this qualitatively is quite an old suggestion (pre-Cassini) and follows simply from the moisture-capacity of the atmosphere (I like to say 'Titan is to the hydrological cycle what Venus is to the greenhouse effect - a terrestrial process taken to an instructive extreme' : as our atmosphere warms and can hold more moisture, basically like putting a larger capacitor in a relaxation oscillator circuit - we will get heavier storms separated by longer droughts)

What is interesting about the new work, using a global circulation model, is that it shows differences in precipitation character at different latitudes, with the most extreme storms at midlatitudes where Cassini has observed alluvial fans.