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  5. Data and scripts from: Modeling the Seasonality of Wind-Driven Hydrocarbon Waves in Titan's Polar Lakes

Data and scripts from: Modeling the Seasonality of Wind-Driven Hydrocarbon Waves in Titan's Polar Lakes

File(s)
Detelich_JGRPlanets_2026_README.md (4.57 KB)
Detelich_JGRPlanets_2026.zip (13.73 GB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://doi.org/10.7298/pz39-p920
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/118903
Collections
Astronomy - Papers, Research and Monographs
Author
Detelich, Charlene E.
Schneck, Una G.
Hayes, Alexander G.
Curcic, Milan
Palermo, Rose V.
Ashton, Andrew D.
Perron, J. Taylor
Lora, Juan M.
Steckloff, Jordan
Abstract

These files contain data supporting all results reported in Detelich et al. "Modeling the Seasonality of Wind-Driven Hydrocarbon Waves in Titan's Polar Lakes". In Detelich et al., we found: Titan, the only body in the solar system aside from Earth with standing liquids on its surface, has polar hydrocarbon lakes and seas. As Titan's atmosphere generates light winds, there should be waves on the surface of these lakes and seas, yet, direct wave observations are unusually scant. We introduce and use PlanetWaves, an open source 4D spectral wave model, to study Titan’s waves and create seasonal maps of wave shape and propagation on Ontario Lacus and Ligeia Mare. Titan’s modeled waves grow up to 30 times larger than terrestrial waves for the same wind speed, are seasonally present and are largest in the spring and summer when winds are strongest. Average daily winds almost never exceed the wave generation threshold of 0.5 - 0.7 m/s. Average storm winds (~1.5 m/s) generate waves 15 - 48 cm in height with a period ranging 6 - 10.5 s while maximum storm winds (~4 m/s) generate waves 2.7 - 3.2 m in height with a period up to 32 s. Titan’s waves become fetch-independent at ~40 km for average storm winds occurring ~1% of a Titan year and ~100 kilometers for maximum storm winds occurring 2-3 times per Titan decade. On Ontario Lacus, storm winds blow nearly parallel to the eastern shore, potentially driving wave modification of the smooth eastern shoreline. On Ligeia Mare, waves rarely propagate toward a hypothesized wave modified shoreline suggesting that another process, such as tectonics, may contribute to a straight shoreline morphology.

Description
Please cite as: Charlene Detelich, Una Schneck, Alexander Hayes, Milan Curcic, Rose Palermo, Andrew Ashton, J. Taylor Perron, Juan Lora, Jordan Steckloff. (2026) Data and scripts from Modeling the Seasonality of Wind-Driven Hydrocarbon Waves in Titan's Polar Lakes. [dataset] Cornell University Library eCommons Repository. https://doi.org/10.7298/pz39-p920
Sponsorship
This material is based upon work supported by the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) SMD’s Graduate Student Research Fellowship under grant #171064 (C.E.D.), the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) under grant #214106 (U.G.S.), and the NASA Cassini Data Analysis Program under grant 80NSSC20K0484 (U.G.S., R.V.P., A.G.H., and J.T.P.). M.C. was supported by the Office of Naval Research grant N000142412598. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
Date Issued
2026-01-20
Keywords
titan
•
waves
•
planetary science
Rights
CC0 1.0 Universal
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Type
dataset

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