A huge arrow shaped cloud was detected at Titan's equator by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in September 2010, with each side running 280 miles long. The cause of cloud formation in such a shape in Titan may be known, study suggests.
The study of how such a bizarre cloud could have formed is done by planetary scientist Jonathan Mitchell at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his colleagues by simulating the atmosphere of Titan on a three dimensional global climate model. The formation of such clouds is attributed to the waves at Titan's equator, as the study suggests. To better understand how waves can cause clouds to form an arrow shape, we can take the example of a wineglass vibrating with a resonant tone."A wineglass can only support certain types of sound waves because of how the system is structured, and the same holds true in this case on Titan. It's just the natural way the system wants to vibrate. Individual clouds might 'ring the bell,' so to speak, and once this ringing starts, the clouds have to respond to that vibration," says Mitchell."The hope is that we can repeat this sort of analysis to learn even more about what shapes Titan's weather," he added..Whatsoever is the reason of such formations, these formations can result in precipitation up to 20 times more than normal. These types of cloud formations in Titan could explain the widespread presence of certain valleys, said researchers.
Mitchell says that Earth and Titan are sort of like strange siblings and hence, hopes that this would help to understand 'Earth's weather in changing climate'. Mitchell said "Things that only happen at Earth's tropics are spread all over the globe on Titan.These planetary-scale waves that organize storms on Titan are much like waves seen organizing storms in Earth's tropics, although they're less obvious here". Thus, it is clear that the weather changes on Titan are similar to weather changes in tropics on earth and understanding its weather can help to understand earth's weather in changing climate also.
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