Mantle circulation models with variational data assimilation: Inferring past mantle flow and structure from plate motion histories and seismic tomography

Details Mantle circulation models with variational data assimilation: Inferring past mantle flow and structure from plate motion histories and seismic tomography Mantle circulation models with variational data assimilation: Inferring past mantle flow and structure from plate motion histories and seismic tomography

Dec 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmng51c..07b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #NG51C-07

Mathematics

Logic

8120 Dynamics Of Lithosphere And Mantle: General, 8125 Evolution Of The Earth, 8147 Planetary Interiors (5430, 5724)

Scientific paper

Mantle convection models require an initial condition some time in the past. Because this initial condition is unknown for Earth, we cannot infer the geologic evolution of mantle flow from forward mantle convection calculations even for the most recent Mesozoic and Cenozoic geologic history of our planet. Here we introduce a fluid dynamic inverse problem to constrain unknown mantle flow back in time from seismic tomographic observations of the mantle and reconstructions of past plate motions using variational data assimilation. We derive the generalized inverse of mantle convection and explore the initial condition problem in high-resolution, 3-D spherical mantle circulation models for a time period of 100 Myrs, roughly comparable to half a mantle overturn. We present a synthetic modeling experiment to demonstrate that mid-Cretaceous mantle structure can be inferred accurately from fluid dynamic inverse modeling even if an initial first guess assumption about mid-Cretaceous mantle heterogeneity involved only a simple 1-D radial temperature profile. We also demonstrate that convecting Present-Day mantle structure back in time by reversing the time-stepping of the energy equation is insufficient to model mantle structure of the past. The difficulty arises, because such backward convection calculations not only ignore thermal diffusion effects, but also fail to incorporate the generation of thermal buoyancy as we go back in time. Inverse mantle convection modeling should make it possible to infer a number of flow parameters from observational constraints of the mantle

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