Titan's Global Radiant Energy Budget During the Cassini Epoch (2004-2017)

Ellen C. Creecy , Liming Li , Xun Jiang , Robert A. West , Patrick M. Fry , Conor A. Nixon , Matthew E. Kenyon , Benoît Seignovert (1)

1 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique [UMR 6112]

Radiant energies of planets and moons are of wide interest in the fields of geoscience and planetary science. Based on long-term multiinstrument observations from the Cassini spacecraft, we provide here the first observational study of Titan's global radiant energy budget and its seasonal variations. Our results show that Titan's radiant energy budget is not balanced over the Cassini era (2004-2017) with the absorbed solar energy (1.208 ± 0.008) × 10²³ J larger than the emitted thermal energy (1.174 ± 0.005) × 10²³ J. The energy imbalance is 2.9 ± 0.8% of the emitted thermal energy. Titan's global radiant energy budget is not balanced either at the timescales of Earth's years and Titan's seasons. In particular, the energy imbalance can be beyond 10% of the emitted thermal energy at the timescale of an Earth year. The energy imbalance revealed in this study has important impacts on Titan, which should be examined further by theories and models.

Keywords: Titan; Bond albedo; emitted power; radiant energy budget; energy imbalance; Climate

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]

Ellen C. Creecy, Liming Li, Xun Jiang, Robert A. West, Patrick M. Fry, et al.. Titan's Global Radiant Energy Budget During the Cassini Epoch (2004-2017). Geophysical Research Letters, 2021, 48, 6, p. 1198. ⟨10.1029/2021GL095356⟩. ⟨insu-03663673⟩