Models of large-scale viscous flow in the Earth's mantle with constraints from mineral physics and surface observations

Abstract

Modelling the geoid has been a widely used and successful approach in constraining flow and viscosity in the Earth's mantle. However, details of the viscosity structure cannot be tightly constrained with this approach. Here, radial viscosity variations in four to five mantle layers (lithosphere, upper mantle, one to two transition zone layers, lower mantle) are computed with the aid of independent mineral physics results. A density model is obtained by converting s-wave anomalies from seismic tomography to density anomalies. Assuming both are of thermal origin, conversion factors are computed based on mineral physics results. From the density and viscosity model, a model of mantle flow, and the resulting geoid and radial heat flux profile are computed. Absolute viscosity values in the mantle layers are treated as free parameters and determined by minimizing a misfit function, which considers fit to geoid, ‘Haskell average’ determined from post-glacial rebound and the radial heat flux profile and penalizes if at some depth computed heat flux exceeds the estimated mantle heat flux 33 TW. Typically, optimized models do not exceed this value by more than about 20 per cent and fit the Haskell average well. Viscosity profiles obtained show a characteristic hump in the lower mantle, with maximum viscosities of about 1023 Pa s just above the D″ layer— several hundred to about 1000 times the lowest viscosities in the upper mantle. This viscosity contrast is several times higher than what is inferred when a constant lower mantle viscosity is assumed. The geoid variance reduction obtained is up to about 80 per cent—similar to previous results. However, because of the use of mineral physics constraints, a rather small number of free model parameters is required, and at the same time, a reasonable heat flux profile is obtained. Results are best when the lowest viscosities occur in the transition zone. When viscosity is lowest in the asthenosphere, variance reduction is about 70–75 per cent. Best results were obtained with a viscous lithosphere with a few times 1022 Pa s. The optimized models yield a core-mantle boundary excess ellipticity several times higher than observed, possibly indicating that radial stresses are partly compensated due to non-thermal lateral variations within the lowermost mantle.