资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Radiant energies of planets and moons are of wide interest in the fields of geoscience and planetary science. Based on long-term multi-instrument observations from the Cassini spacecraft, we provide here the first observational study of Titan’s global radiant energy budget and its seasonal variations. Our results show that Titan’s radiant energy budget is not balanced over the Cassini era (2004-2017) with the absorbed solar energy (1.208±0.008)×10²³ J larger than the emitted thermal energy (1.174±0.005)×10²³ J. The energy imbalance is 2.9±0.8% of the emitted thermal energy. Titan’s global radiant energy budget is not balanced either at the time scales of Earth’s years and Titan’s seasons. In particular, the energy imbalance can be beyond 10% of the emitted thermal energy at the time scale of an Earth year. The energy imbalance revealed in this study has important impacts on Titan, which should be examined further by theories and models.