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P. Rannou (Service d'Aéronomie/UVSQ), F. Hourdin, S. Lebonnois (Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/Paris 6), D. Luz (LESIA/Meudon)
During the last six years we developped a coupled model of Titan atmosphere, including interactions between dynamics, microphysics and chemistry. This model has provided a global understanding of the coupling between different components of the atmosphere -- haze and chemical species transported by dynamics -- haze and chemistry feedback on the temperature field and on circulation.\\ This model also gives an explanation for Titan seasonnal reflectivity and haze and composition distributions. As well, it yields an unexpected answer for the presence of the detached haze.\\ Here we present a synthesis of the published results and we also discuss the near future improvment of the model. We first plan to build a Titan database from the results of our model in order to prepare interpretation of Cassini/Huygens observations. We already received fund for this database.\\ Also, many recent observations have shown presence of clouds near the south pole. These teasing clouds could be easily studied with a 3D circulation model. We plan to include a simple cloud microphys ics model (similar to those of martian models) in order to adress this question.\\ These studies were initially funded by the NRC (while P.R. held a post-doc position at NASA Ames in 1997) and then by the French Programme National de Planétologie (INSU/CNRS) from 1997 to 2003.\\
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35 #4
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.