Evidence of Titan's Climate History from Evaporite Distribution

Water-ice-poor, 5-$μ$m-bright material on Saturn's moon Titan has previously been geomorphologically identified as evaporitic. Here we present a global distribution of the occurrences of the 5-$μ$m-bright spectral unit, identified with Cassini's Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS)...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: MacKenzie, Shannon M., Barnes, Jason W., Sotin, Christophe, Soderblom, Jason M., Mouélic, Stéphane Le, Rodriguez, Sebastien, Baines, Kevin H., Buratti, Bonnie J., Clark, Roger N., Nicholson, Phillip D., McCord, Thomas B.
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: arXiv 2014
Subjects:
Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP
FOS Physical sciences
South Pole
South pole
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1408.2899
https://arxiv.org/abs/1408.2899
Description
Summary:Water-ice-poor, 5-$μ$m-bright material on Saturn's moon Titan has previously been geomorphologically identified as evaporitic. Here we present a global distribution of the occurrences of the 5-$μ$m-bright spectral unit, identified with Cassini's Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and examined with RADAR when possible. We explore the possibility that each of these occurrences are evaporite deposits. The 5-$μ$m-bright material covers 1\% of Titan's surface and is not limited to the poles (the only regions with extensive, long-lived surface liquid). We find the greatest areal concentration to be in the equatorial basins Tui Regio and Hotei Regio. Our interpretations, based on the correlation between 5-$μ$m-bright material and lakebeds, imply that there was enough liquid present at some time to create the observed 5-$μ$m-bright material. We address the climate implications surrounding a lack of evaporitic material at the south polar basins: if the south pole basins were filled at some point in the past, then where is the evaporite?

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