What if the atmosphere of Titan were like the one on Venus? The current mean temperature in Titan is &minus;180 ºC (93 K), the same as in Saturn.

But I was wondering what would be the case if the atmosphere of Titan would be like the Venus atmosphere, whose composition is mainly CO2 and has a pressure of 90 bar, instead of approximately 1.5 bar.

What temperature could Titan reach in that case? Would the greenhouse effect allow the moon to be heated enough to maintain liquid water or is it too far from the Sun to be affected by any kind of greenhouse effect? Maybe the latest question allows to ask another one: How far from the Sun could Venus be so it can have temperatures above 0 ºC?

The question may be answered given two possible alternatives:


Same composition as Venus, but same pressure as in Titan.
Same composition and pressure as in Venus.
If the pressure were the same as the current pressure on Titan, the planet would be slightly warmer for a while, but not for long. The CO2 would soon be frozen out. It is probable that 4 billion years ago the atmospheres of Venus,Earth,Masrs and Titan were much more similar. A hotter Saturn may have warmed Titan in those days. It probably,like the others, had a lot of CO2 in its atmosphere,but that has long ago been frozen out. There is plenty of frozen water on Titan, and if gelogists ever dig down far enough,they are likely to find a layer of frozen CO2 there as well.