Heavy Methane Rainstorms Batter Titan, Researchers Say

Saturn’s hazy moon has surprisingly extreme rainstorms, according to new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

It’s raining on Titan. Image credit: David A. Hardy, AstroArt / NASA.

It’s raining on Titan. Image credit: David A. Hardy, AstroArt / NASA.

Although rainstorms are rare on Titan (less than once per Titanian year, which is 29.5 Earth years), they occur much more frequently than planetary researchers expected.

“I would have thought these would be once-a-millennium events, if even that. So this is quite a surprise,” said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Mitchell, from the University of California, Los Angeles.

“The storms create massive floods in terrain that are otherwise deserts. Titan’s surface is strikingly similar to Earth’s, with flowing rivers that spill into great lakes and seas, and the moon has storm clouds that bring seasonal, monsoon-like downpours. But Titan’s precipitation is liquid methane, not water.”

The study also found that the extreme methane rainstorms may imprint Titan’s icy surface in much the same way that extreme rainstorms shape Earth’s rocky surface.

“On Earth, intense storms can trigger large flows of sediment that spread into low lands and form cone-shaped features called alluvial fans,” the authors said.

“We found that regional patterns of extreme rainfall on Titan are correlated with recent detections of alluvial fans, suggesting that they were formed by intense rainstorms.”

“The finding demonstrates the role of extreme precipitation in shaping Titan’s surface,” said co-author Dr. Seulgi Moon, also from the University of California, Los Angeles.

“The principle likely applies to Mars, which has large alluvial fans of its own, and to other planetary bodies.”

“Greater understanding of the relationship between precipitation and the planetary surfaces could lead to new insights about the impact of climate change on Earth and other planets.”

The researchers used computer simulations to study Titan’s hydrologic cycle because observations of actual precipitation on Titan are difficult to obtain and because, given the length of each year on Titan, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft only observed the moon for three seasons.

They found that while rain mostly accumulates near the poles, where Titan’s major lakes and seas are located, the most intense rainstorms occur near 60 degrees latitude — precisely the region where alluvial fans are most heavily concentrated.

The study suggests that the intense storms develop due to the sharp differences between the wetter, cooler weather in the higher latitudes and the drier, warmer conditions in the lower latitudes.

“Similar temperature contrasts on Earth produce intense cyclones in the mid-latitudes, which is what creates the storms and blizzards that are common during the winter months across much of North America,” the scientists said.

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S.P. Faulk et al. Regional patterns of extreme precipitation on Titan consistent with observed alluvial fan distribution. Nature Geoscience, published online October 9, 2017; doi: 10.1038/ngeo3043

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