Hydrocarbon Rain Swells Titan's Lakes

Rob Carr writes "According to the Cassini team, 'Recent images of Titan from NASA's Cassini spacecraft affirm the presence of lakes of liquid hydrocarbons by capturing changes in the lakes brought on by rainfall.' The northern lakes are now larger following a period in which hydrocarbon clouds covered their skies. (The research was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.) This change adds to the evidence these areas are indeed hydrocarbon lakes. But this discovery raises several more questions: where is the methane in the atmosphere coming from, and how long can this complex hydrocarbon cycle on Titan go on? The new evidence emphasizes the need for another mission to Titan."

Comments

Re:source http://www.esa.int

[Cally]

I actually shelled out $9 to read the Geophysical Review Letters paper (I take my armchair planetary science geekery pretty seriously, but sadly not enough to justify journal subscriptions.) One possibility mentioned is sub-surface reservoirs as a possible source keeping the atmosphere topped up. (Note that unlike on earth, where methane has an atmospheric lifetime measured in weeks, at Titan it's millions or tens of millions of years.) Another interesting thing is the description of GCMs (global circulation models) and evidence of classical, earth-style Hadley cells, a major feature of earth's climate.