Physics
Scientific paper
Nov 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001aps..4cf.db001b&link_type=abstract
American Physical Society, Four Corners Annual Meeting November 2 - 3, 2001 New Mexico State University; Las Cruces, New Mexico
Physics
Scientific paper
Parallel supercomputers now make possible spatial resolution of about 50 km in 3D spherical geometry models of the Earth's mantle and lithosphere. This resolution is close to being sufficient to capture the essential physics of the thermal boundary layers that play such a key role in the planet's overall dynamics and physical history. Earth's upper boundary layer, or lithosphere, appears to be unique in the solar system in that it has supported plate tectonics for more than a brief instant. This special behavior is almost certainly related to the presence of liquid water at Earth's surface. Water, because of its weakening effects on silicate rock, first of all, appears to enable the process of subduction. Subduction, in turn, transports water into the mantle below and sustains a weak zone known as the asthenosphere that acts to decouple, in a mechanical sense, the lithosphere from stiffer mantle beneath. Subducted water, because it also facilitates partial melting and chemical differentiation, further appears to have played a key role in the formation of Earth's continental crust, which also is unique relative to planets in our solar system. Recent numerical advances have made possible the treatment of extreme gradients in material properties that arise when water is present and stresses become large. These numerical methods now allow a self-consistent treatment of tectonic plates that spread apart and subduct as a natural part of a dynamical simulation. For the first time we observe in these simulations global patterns of mantle flow dominated by the same low harmonic degrees as observed in the plate tectonics portion of Earth history. The calculations employ a parallel finite element formulation on a set of grids constructed from the regular icosahedron. A multigrid solver exploits the natural hierarchy of such nested grids to solve on each time step a system of equations involving tens of millions of unknowns in a highly efficient manner.
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