Heat-blanketed convection and its implications for the continental lithosphere

Abstract

Earth's continents are characterized by a strong enrichment in long-lived radioactive isotopes. Recent estimates suggest that they contribute to 33\% of the heat released at the surface of the Earth, while occupying less than 1\% of the mantle. This distinctive feature has profound implications for the underlying mantle by impacting its thermal structure and heat transfer. However, the effects of a continental crust enriched in heat-producing elements on the underlying mantle have not yet been systematically investigated. Here, we conduct a preliminary investigation by considering a simplified convective system consisting in a mixed heated fluid where all the internal heating is concentrated in a top layer of thickness $d_{HL}$ (referred to as "heat-blanketed convection"). We perform 24 numerical simulations in 3D Cartesian geometry for four specific set-ups and various values of $d_{HL}$. Our results suggest that the effects of the heated layer strongly depend on its thickness relative to the thickness of the thermal boundary layer ($\delta_{TBL}$) in the homogeneous heating case ($d_{HL} = 1.0$). More specifically, for $d_{HL} > \delta_{TBL}$, the effects induced by the heated layer are quite modest, while, for $d_{HL} < \delta_{TBL}$, the properties of the convective system are strongly altered as $d_{HL}$ decreases. In particular, the surface heat flux and convective vigour are significantly enhanced for very thin heated layers compared to the case $d_{HL} = 1.0$. The vertical distribution of heat producing elements may therefore play a key role on mantle dynamics. For Earth, the presence of continents should however not affect significantly the surface heat flux, and thus the Earth's cooling rate.