Subsidence-induced methane clouds in Titan’s winter polar stratosphere and upper troposphere

• Titan’s tropopause temperatures decrease steadily from low to high northern latitudes.
• The stratospheric methane mole fraction at high northern winter latitudes is 1.50%.
• Methane clouds form in Titan’s stratosphere due to winter polar subsidence.
• The northern polar winter cloud system consists of a methane/ethane composite.

Titan’s atmospheric methane most likely originates from lakes at the surface and subsurface reservoirs. Accordingly, it has been commonly assumed that Titan’s tropopause region, where the vertical temperature profile is a minimum, acts as a cold trap for convecting methane, leading to the expectation that the formation of methane clouds in Titan’s stratosphere would be rare. The additional assumption that Titan’s tropopause temperatures are independent of latitude is also required. However, Cassini Composite InfraRed Spectrometer (CIRS) and Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) data sets reveal colder temperatures in Titan’s tropopause region near the winter pole than those at low latitudes and in the summer hemisphere. This, combined with the presence of a cross-equatorial meridional circulation with winter polar subsidence, as suggested by current general circulation models, implies the inevitable formation of Subsidence-Induced Methane Clouds (SIMCs) over Titan’s winter pole. We verified this by retrieving the stratospheric methane mole fraction at 70°N from the strength of the far infrared methane pure rotation lines observed by CIRS and by assuming the RSS-derived thermal profile at 74.1°N. Our retrieved methane mole fraction of 1.50 ± 0.15% allows for methane to condense and form SIMCs at altitudes between ∼48 and ∼20 km. Radiative transfer analyses of a color composite image obtained by the Cassini Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) during northern winter appear to corroborate the existence of these clouds.