Modeling Standing Tidal Oscillations in Titan's Lower Atmosphere

An investigation is made into the excitation of large-scale tidal oscillations within the atmosphere of Titan. Essentially, there exists both time-dependent and time-independent components of tidal variability. A stationary equilibrium tide results from unperturbed tidal potential induced by Saturn. Titan's highly eccentric (epsilon =0.0289) orbit manifests itself in the form of a time-dependent first order perturbation in tidal potential. A numerical integration scheme was utilized to quantify the magnitude of air velocity divergence in Titan's atmosphere up to 575 km. This data is necessitated by Laplace's tidal equations which are employed in the calculation of mode-dependent barometric fluctuation and vertical air velocity for the time-dependent eccentricity induced tide. Systematic error analysis was performed with multiple procedures. The time-dependent, eccentricity-induced tidal perturbation was found to be of the order of 0.02 mbar for a zero zonal wave number. Overall implications will be examined.