The effects of phase boundary induced layering on the Earth's thermal history

Abstract

The convective Urey ratio is equal to the instantaneous heating generated in the Earth's mantle by radioactive decay divided by the contribution of convection in Earth's mantle to Earth's surface heat flow. The measured heat flow at the Earth's surface as well as geochemical models for radioactive abundances give relatively low modern-day convective Urey ratios of roughly 0.4 while early parameterized modelling studies that treated the internal heating rate as a free parameter indicated relatively high modern-day Urey ratios of at least 0.6. Seismic tomographic images of subducting slabs and numerical simulations of convection in Earth's mantle indicate that convection is partially layered by the endothermic phase transition at 660-km depth in the mantle. In numerical simulations, the 660-km depth phase transition also leads to increased time-dependence of the mantle flow and mantle 'avalanches'. Incomplete layering has been proposed as a mechanism that could store heat in Earth's lower mantle early in Earth's evolution and release it at later times when the degree of layering decreases thus allowing for the modern-day surface heat flow with a relatively low internal heating rate. In this contribution, the Earth's thermal history is simulated using both dynamic models of mantle circulation that include the effects of the mantle phase transitions and parametrized models of mantle heat transfer. In particular, we will show that for dynamic models with Earth-like parameters describing the 660-km-depth phase boundary that, although the mass flux at 660-km depth is partially impeded and avalanching takes place, the long-term evolution of the surface heat flow is very similar to models with no phase boundary induced layering and hence incomplete mantle layering is not a likely solution of the mantle heat flow paradox. © 2009 The Author Journal compilation © 2009 RAS.