Investigating the effect of lateral viscosity variations in the Earth's mantle

Abstract:

Seismic tomography can be used to investigate radial viscosity variations on instantaneous flow models by predicting the global geoid and comparing with the observed geoid. This method is one of many that has been used to constrain viscosity structure in the Earth's mantle in the last few decades. Using the 3D mantle convection model, Stag-YY (e.g., Hernlund and Tackley, 2008), we are further able to explore the effect of lateral variations in viscosity in addition to the radial variations. Examining over 50 tomographic models we found notable differences by comparing a synthetically produced geoid with the observed geoid. Comparing S- and P-wave tomographic models, the S-wave models provided a better fit to the observed geoid. Using this large suite of 50 tomographic models, we have been able to constrain the radial viscosity structure of the Earth. We found that two types of viscosity profiles yielded equally good fits. A viscosity profile with a low transition zone viscosity and a lower mantle viscosity equal to the upper mantle, or a profile with a large lower mantle viscosity and a transition zone viscosity similar to the upper mantle. Using the set of radial viscosity profiles that gave the best fit to the observed geoid, we can explore a range of lateral viscosity variations and see how they affect the different types of tomographic models. Improving on previous studies of lateral viscosity variations (e.g. Ghosh, Becker and Zhong, 2010), we systematically explore a large range of tomographic models and density-velocity conversion factors. We explore which type of tomographic model (S- or P- wave) is more strongly affected by lateral viscosity variations, as well as the effect on isotropic and anisotropic models. We constrain the strength of lateral viscosity variations necessary to produce a high correlation between observed and predicted geoid anomalies. We will discuss the wavelength of flow that is most affected by the lateral viscosity variations.

REFERENCES
Hernlund, J. W. and Tackley, P. J., 2008. Modeling mantle convection in the spherical annulus, Phys. Earth Planet. Int., 171(1-4).
Ghosh, A., T. W. Becker, and S. J. Zhong, 2010. Effects of lateral viscosity variations on the geoid, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L01301, doi:10.1029/2009GL040426.