Explanipedia

Zonal winds in Titan's middle atmosphere from a stellar occultation observed with Keck adaptive optics Open

Theresa C. Marlin, E. F. Young, Katherine de Kleer, Martin Cordiner, Nicholas E. Lombardo , et al. · 2025

We present spatially resolved Keck/NIRC2 images of a stellar occultation by Titan on September 5, 2022 and compare them to predictions from concurrent ALMA observations and a suite of General Circulation Model (GCM) simulations. ALMA data …

Atmospheric River Impacts on the Greenland Ice Sheet Through the Last Interglacial Open

Joseph Schnaubelt, Clay Tabor, Bette L. Otto‐Bliesner, Juan M. Lora · 2025

Earth's mid‐latitudes host synoptic scale corridors of intense horizontal moisture transport called atmospheric rivers (ARs). These storms are responsible for substantial heat transport across the mid‐latitudes and deliver large amounts of…

The local effect of surface liquid methane and topography on Titan’s weather Open

Audrey Chatain, Léa Bonnefoy, Enora Moisan, Scot Rafkin, Alejandro Soto , et al. · 2025

Titan hosts quite Earth-like weather patterns. This is mainly due to the fact that its surface pressure is very close to the Earth’ (1.5 bar) and that methane is abundant and with atmospheric conditions near its triple point. It can theref…

Periodicity of Mars's Northern Annular Mode May Help Explain Global Dust Storm Frequency Open

J. Michael Battalio, Juan M. Lora, Sandro W. Lubis, Pedram Hassanzadeh · 2025

Annular modes represent some of the largest sources of climate variability for Earth and Mars. Annular modes are zonally symmetric patterns of variability that represent the jet stream shifting north and south in time and are associated wi…

Toward a Comprehensive Global Climate Model of Uranus: Radiative-Convective and Dynamical Simulations Open

Caleb Keaveney, Juan M. Lora · 2025

Uranus is a unique world in the solar system, with its extreme obliquity and low apparent internal heat flux raising compelling atmospheric and climate dynamics questions. Observations reveal an altogether different circulation regime from…

Diurnal and Seasonal Variations of Titan’s Surface Temperature and Planetary Boundary Layer Structure Simulated with Dry and Moist GCMs Open

S. Han, Juan M. Lora · 2025

Understanding Titan’s Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL)—the lowest part of the atmosphere directly influenced by surface conditions—remains challenging due to Titan’s dense atmosphere and limited direct observations. Previous modeling efforts…

The Titan Middle Atmosphere Intercomparison Project Open

Nicholas A. Lombardo, Bruno de Batz de Trenquelléon, Jacob Shultis, Juan M. Lora, P. Rannou , et al. · 2025

The atmosphere of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is unique in the Solar System. Like Earth, its atmosphere is mostly composed of molecular nitrogen, though unlike Earth, there is no molecular oxygen and instead the second most abundant…

The Rise and Fall of a Mid-West Tilt: Seasonal Evolution of Titan’s Stratospheric Tilt Axis Open

Lucy Wright, N. A. Teanby, P. G. J. Irwin, C. A. Nixon, Nicholas A. Lombardo , et al. · 2025

Titan’s entire stratosphere is in superrotation (Flasar et al. 2005) and appears to rotate about an axis offset from its solid body rotation axis by around 4o (Achterberg et al. 2008). The stratospheric tilt axis has been estimated previou…

Thermal Inertia Controls on Titan's Surface Temperature and Planetary Boundary Layer Structure Open

S. Han, Juan M. Lora · 2025

Understanding Titan's planetary boundary layer (PBL)-the lowest region of the atmosphere influenced by surface conditions-remains challenging due to Titan's thick atmosphere and limited observations. Previous modeling studies have produced…

Past aquifer responses to climate recorded by fossil groundwater Open

Alan Seltzer, Rebecca Tyne, Israela Musan, Jeff B. Langman, Dillon J. Amaya , et al. · 2025

Billions of people rely upon groundwater for drinking water and agriculture, yet predicting how climate change may affect aquifer storage remains challenging. To gain insight beyond the short historical record, we reconstruct changes in gr…

The atmosphere of Titan in late northern summer from JWST and Keck observations Open

C. A. Nixon, Bruno Bézard, Thomas Cornet, Brandon Park Coy, Imke de Pater , et al. · 2025

Seasonal Evolution of Titan’s Stratospheric Tilt and Temperature Field at High Resolution from Cassini/CIRS Open

Lucy Wright, N. A. Teanby, P. G. J. Irwin, C. A. Nixon, Nicholas A. Lombardo , et al. · 2025

The Cassini spacecraft observed Titan from 2004 to 2017, capturing key atmospheric features, including the tilt of the middle atmosphere and the formation and breakup of winter polar vortices. We analyze low spectral resolution infrared ob…

Propagation and Periodicity of Mars's Northern Annular Mode Modulates the Dust Cycle Open

J. Michael Battalio, Juan M. Lora, Sandro W. Lubis, Pedram Hassanzadeh · 2025

We document the propagation of annular modes—zonally symmetric patterns of variability—in Mars's atmosphere using a reanalysis dataset. Mars's Northern Annular Mode (MNAM) sees anomalies of zonal‐mean zonal wind emerge near the subtropics …

Atmospheric River Detection Under Changing Seasonality and Mean‐State Climate: ARTMIP Tier 2 Paleoclimate Experiments Open

William Rush, Juan M. Lora, Christopher B. Skinner, Sofia Menemenlis, Christine A. Shields , et al. · 2025

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are filamentary structures within the atmosphere that account for a substantial portion of poleward moisture transport and play an important role in Earth's hydroclimate. However, there is no one quantitative defin…

Interpreting seasonal and interannual Hadley cell descending edge migrations via the cell-mean Rossby number Open

Spencer A. Hill, Simona Bordoni, Jonathan L. Mitchell, Juan M. Lora · 2024

The poleward extent of Earth's zonal-mean Hadley cells varies across seasons and years, which would be nice to capture in a simple theory. A plausible, albeit diagnostic, candidate from Hill et al (2022) combines the conventional two-layer…

Titan’s Atmosphere in Late Northern Summer from JWST and Keck Observations Open

C. A. Nixon, Bruno Bézard, Thomas Cornet, Brandon Park Coy, Imke de Pater , et al. · 2024

Saturn’s moon Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, composed largely of nitrogen (94.5–98.6%) and methane (5.5–1.4%). Due to the cold troposphere and surface (70–93 K) close to the trip…

Modelling the climate in Titan’s lake regions Open

Audrey Chatain, Léa Bonnefoy, Enora Moisan, Scot Rafkin, Alejandro Soto , et al. · 2024

Titan interestingly has many similarities with the Earth. It has a thick atmosphere, made mostly of dinitrogen, and a surface pressure of 1.5 bar. It also hosts a hydrological cycle similar to the water cycle on Earth, but based on methane…

Clouds and Seasonality on Terrestrial Planets with Varying Rotation Rates  Open

Daniel A. Williams, Xuan Ji, P. Corlies, Juan M. Lora · 2024

Clouds have been observed on Venus, Mars and Titan, and a growing number of exoplanets, yet the connection between planetary rotation rate and cloud distribution has not previously been extensively investigated. Using an idealised climate …

Titan in Late Northern Summer from JWST and Keck Observations Open

C. A. Nixon, Bruno Bézard, Thomas Cornet, Brandon Park Coy, Imke de Pater , et al. · 2024

Titan is an object of fascination for scientists researching the solar system, as a ‘terrestrial-like’ world with active meteorology and fluvial and lacustrine formations based on methane chemistry and condensation. The Cassini…

Clouds and Seasonality on Terrestrial Planets with Varying Rotation Rates Open

Daniel A. Williams, Xuan Ji, P. Corlies, Juan M. Lora · 2024

Using an idealized climate model incorporating seasonal forcing, we investigate the impact of rotation rate on the abundance of clouds on an Earth-like aquaplanet, and the resulting impacts upon albedo and seasonality. We show that the clo…

Clouds and Seasonality on Terrestrial Planets with Varying Rotation Rates Open

Daniel A. Williams, Xuan Ji, P. Corlies, Juan M. Lora · 2024

Using an idealised climate model incorporating seasonal forcing, we investigate the impact of rotation rate on the abundance of clouds on an Earth-like aquaplanet, and the resulting impacts upon albedo and seasonality. We show that the clo…

The impact of lake shape and size on lake breezes and air-lake exchanges on Titan Open

Audrey Chatain, Scot Rafkin, Alejandro Soto, Enora Moisan, Juan M. Lora , et al. · 2023

North Atlantic meltwater during Heinrich Stadial 1 drives wetter climate with more atmospheric rivers in western North America Open

Jessica Oster, Sophia I. Macarewich, Marcus Löfverström, Cameron de Wet, Isabel P. Montañez , et al. · 2023

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) bring concentrated rainfall and flooding to the western United States (US) and are hypothesized to have supported sustained hydroclimatic changes in the past. However, their ephemeral nature makes it challenging to…

The Hydrologic Cycle and Atmospheric Rivers in CESM2 Simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum Open

Juan M. Lora, Christopher B. Skinner, William Rush, Seung H. Baek · 2023

Proxy reconstructions and model simulations of precipitation during Earth's glacial periods suggest that the locations and mechanisms of atmospheric moisture transport have changed considerably during Earth's past. We investigate the hydro…

North Atlantic meltwater during Heinrich Stadial 1 drives wetter climate with more atmospheric rivers in western North America Open

Jessica Oster, Sophia I. Macarewich, Marcus Löfverström, Cameron de Wet, Isabel P. Montañez , et al. · 2023

Climate model output for simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum (~21 ka) and Heinrich Stadial 1 (~16 ka) using the Community Earth System Model v1.3 (see README.txt file for more information).

The impact of lake shape and size on lake breezes and air-lake exchanges on Titan Open

Audrey Chatain, Scot Rafkin, Alejandro Soto, Enora Moisan, Juan M. Lora , et al. · 2023

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, has many lakes on its surface, formed mainly of liquid methane. Like water lakes on Earth, these methane lakes on Titan likely profoundly affect the local climate. Previous studies (Rafkin and Soto 2020, …

The hydrologic cycle and atmospheric rivers in CESM2 simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum Open

Juan M. Lora, Christopher B. Skinner, William Rush, Seung H. Baek · 2023

This dataset contains processed output from CESM2 simulations presented in the GRL manuscript "The hydrologic cycle and atmospheric rivers in CESM2 simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum.'' The files, in netCDF format, include processed i…

Equatorial Waves and Superrotation in the Stratosphere of a Titan General Circulation Model Open

Neil T. Lewis, Nicholas A. Lombardo, P. L. Read, Juan M. Lora · 2023

We investigate the characteristics of equatorial waves associated with the maintenance of superrotation in the stratosphere of a Titan general circulation model. A variety of equatorial waves are present in the model atmosphere, including …

Impact of Climate on the Global Capacity for Enhanced Rock Weathering on Croplands Open

Seung H. Baek, Yoshiki Kanzaki, Juan M. Lora, Noah J. Planavsky, Christopher T. Reinhard , et al. · 2023

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) on croplands has emerged as an economically and ecologically promising negative emissions technology. However, estimated total carbon sequestration potential from ERW on croplands and its potential sensitivit…

Dataset for "The impact of lake shape and size on lake breezes and air-lake exchanges on Titan" Open

Audrey Chatain, Scot Rafkin, Alejandro Soto, Enora Moisan, Juan M. Lora , et al. · 2023

Code and data presented in the paper "The impact of lake shape and size on lake breezes and air-lake exchanges on Titan", published in Icarus in 2024 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115925). Are made available: -the Fortran source c…

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