On the admissible range of the radial temperature gradient and Brünt-Väisäla frequency in the mantle and core: I. Main relations

Аннотация

The question of ambiguity in the solution of the inverse problem for determining the Brünt-Väisäla frequency in the Earth’s mantle from the entire set of the up-to-date data on seismicity, free oscillations, and forced nutations of the Earth, as well as the data on the Earth’s total mass and total moment of inertia, is considered. Based on the results of a series of numerical experiments, the band of admissible distributions of the Brünt-Väisäla frequency and mantle density with depth is calculated. This estimate is used for investigating the convective and gravitational stability of the different regions of the mantle against relatively small adiabatic and nonadiabatic perturbations. The generalization of the known Rayleigh criterion of convective stability of homogeneous and a nonself-gravitating incompressible viscous fluid for the case of a compressible self-gravitating fluid is given. A system of the ordinary eight-order differential equations with complex coefficients and homogeneous boundary conditions, whose eigenvalues determine the transition from the stable state to instability, is obtained. Examples of the numerical determination of these eignevalues are presented. For interpreting the data about the band of the admissible distributions of the Brünt-Väisäla frequency with depth, the notion of the effective bulk modulus of the medium at different depths is introduced. This quantity governs the depth changes in temperature in a convecting mantle and allows us to make a conclusion about the role of heat conduction and the radial heterogeneity of the mantle composition without imposing any constraints on the convection mechanism. It is shown that within the present-day observation errors in the frequencies of the Earth’s free oscillations, the simplest reasonable model is that in which the ratio of the effective bulk modulus to its adiabatic value in the lower and middle mantle is 1.043 ± 0.05. The closeness of this value to unity indicates that convection in the lower and middle mantle is fairly close to adiabatic. At the same time, when the analysis only relies on seismic data and on the information about the periods of the free oscillations of the Earth, there is a significant uncertainty in the models of the effective bulk modulus distribution in the upper mantle and crust. This uncertainty precludes us from making purely empirically derived conclusions that reliably and unambiguously describe the role of the effects of heat conduction and radially heterogeneous material composition in the convection in the upper mantle.