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Clouds on Titan result from the condensation of methane and ethane and, as onother planets, are primarily structured by circulation of the atmosphere. Atpresent, cloud activity mainly occurs in the southern (summer) hemisphere,arising near the pole and at mid-latitudes from cumulus updrafts triggered bysurface heating and/or local methane sources, and at the north (winter) pole,resulting from the subsidence and condensation of ethane-rich air into thecolder troposphere. General circulation models predict that this distributionshould change with the seasons on a 15-year timescale, and that clouds shoulddevelop under certain circumstances at temperate latitudes (~40\degree) in thewinter hemisphere. The models, however, have hitherto been poorly constrainedand their long-term predictions have not yet been observationally verified.Here we report that the global spatial cloud coverage on Titan is in generalagreement with the models, confirming that cloud activity is mainly controlledby the global circulation. The non-detection of clouds at latitude ~40\degree Nand the persistence of the southern clouds while the southern summer is endingare, however, both contrary to predictions. This suggests that Titan'sequator-to-pole thermal contrast is overestimated in the models and that itsatmosphere responds to the seasonal forcing with a greater inertia thanexpected.

Global circulation as the main source of cloud activity on Titan