Turbulence modelling in Titan's zonal wind collapse
Abstract
The atmosphere of Titan is interesting by many aspects but there is another feature by which the atmosphere of Titan is unique, a strong decrease of the zonal wind between 60 and 100 km known as the "zonal wind collapse". Global Circulation Models (GCM) are powerful tools to study atmospheric circulations but they fail to reproduce in a realistic way this feature. We propose here to study for the first time this wind structure using turbulence-resolving model. The strong decrease of the zonal wind between 65 and 60 km causes a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability that leads to the generation of gravity waves. The dissipation of these waves engenders a momentum transfer to the flow and impacts the zonal wind.
- Publication:
-
EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019
- Pub Date:
- September 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019EPSC...13.1430L