Methane storms as a driver of Titan's dune orientation
Résumé
The equatorial regions of Saturn's moon Titan are covered by linear dunes that propagate eastwards 1-3. Global climate models (GCMs), however, predict westward mean surface winds at low latitudes on Titan, similar to the trade winds on Earth 1,4. This apparent contradiction has been attributed to Saturn's gravitational tides 1 , large-scale topography 4 and wind statistics 5 , but none of these hypotheses fully explains the global eastward propagation of dunes in Titan's equatorial band. However, above altitudes of about 5 km, Titan's atmosphere is in eastward super-rotation, suggesting that this momentum may be delivered to the surface. Here we assess the influence of equatorial tropical methane storms-which develop at high altitudes during the equinox-on Titan's dune orientation, using mesoscale simulations of convective methane clouds 6,7 with a GCM wind profile that includes super-rotation 8. We find that these storms produce fast eastward gust fronts above the surface that exceed the normal westward surface winds. These episodic gusts generated by tropical storms are expected to dominate aeolian transport, leading to eastward propagation of dunes. We therefore suggest a coupling between super-rotation, tropical methane storms and dune formation on Titan. This framework, applied to GCM predictions and analogies to some terrestrial dune fields, explains the linear shape, eastward propagation and poleward divergence of Titan's dunes, and implies an equatorial origin of dune sand.