TEXES observations of Saturn's stratospheric thermal structure after the 2010 convective event

In December 2010, a huge convective event distorted the cloud layer at 40 N in Saturn's springtime hemisphere. These large convective events are observed regularly in Saturn's atmosphere, about one event per saturnian year, and may play a central role in the transport of the internal heat flux to the radiative layer. However, this event occured at a season (Ls=16) different from that of the previous events (Ls= 110-170). Another unexpected aspect of the 2010 event was its stratospheric signature. As shown by Fletcher et al. (2011) from Cassini/CIRS and VLT/VISIR, in the 40N latitude band, the 1-mbar pressure level warmed by several tens of K at some longitudes and cooled by several K at other longitudes. In order to assess the vertical thermal structure in the disturbed latitudinal band, we performed five half-nights of observations with TEXES mounted on the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) from July 14th, 2011 to July 19th, 2011. The high spectral resolution (R=100,000) provided by TEXES allowed us to resolve several lines of methane in the range 1245-1250 cm-1, and the H₂ S(1) quadrupole line and collision-induced continuum to measure the temperature structure between 100~mbar and 0.01~mbar. We will present the results of the observations in terms of stratospheric temperature structure.