Scientists Discover Titan's Methane Rainstorms Are Far More Intense than Expected, Reshaping Saturn's Largest Moon

Scientists discover Titan's methane rainstorms are far more intense than expected, reshaping Saturn's largest moon

On the distant moon Titan, intense methane rainstorms transform the icy terrain, creating striking alluvial fans that showcase the areas most affected by these rare deluges. Scientists leverage data from the Cassini mission to create models of these phenomena, which happen less frequently than once every Titan year—a period nearly equivalent to 30 Earth years. Understanding Titan's unique weather patterns offers insights into extreme rainfall ev…

Rain does fall on Titan, but models suggest some regions wait decades between storms, and then get hit hard — the dry low latitudes appear to get their weather in rare violent downpours clustered around the equinoxes

Titan is the only world besides our own we know of with a full weather cycle: liquid falls from the sky, runs in rivers, and pools into lakes and seas. The twist is what that liquid is. \ Titan’s surface sits near minus 179 degrees Celsius, far too cold for liquid water. So the rain is methane instead. Everything water does here, methane does there. How we know it rains at all In late September 2010, about a year after Titan’s northern spring eq…