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Efficient cooling of rocky planets by intrusive magmatism

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 322–327 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

The Earth is in a plate tectonics regime with high surface heat flow concentrated at constructive plate boundaries. Other terrestrial bodies that lack plate tectonics are thought to lose their internal heat by conduction through their lids and volcanism: hotter planets (Io and Venus) show widespread volcanism whereas colder ones (modern Mars and Mercury) are less volcanically active. However, studies of terrestrial magmatic processes show that less than 20% of melt volcanically erupts, with most melt intruding into the crust. Signatures of large magmatic intrusions are also found on other planets. Yet, the influence of intrusive magmatism on planetary cooling remains unclear. Here we use numerical magmatic-thermo-mechanical models to simulate global mantle convection in a planetary interior. In our simulations, warm intrusive magmatism acts to thin the lithosphere, leading to sustained recycling of overlying crustal material and cooling of the mantle. In contrast, volcanic eruptions lead to a thick lithosphere that insulates the upper mantle and prevents efficient cooling. We find that heat loss due to intrusive magmatism can be particularly efficient compared to volcanic eruptions if the partitioning of heat-producing radioactive elements into the melt phase is weak. We conclude that the mode of magmatism experienced by rocky bodies determines the thermal and compositional evolution of their interior.

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Fig. 1: Effect of extrusion efficiency and partitioning of HPEs on several averaged quantities over the last 500 Myr of evolution.
Fig. 2: Surface heat loss, behaviour and internal state of a planet/moon in a plutonic squishy lid regime versus in a heat-pipe regime.
Fig. 3: Regime diagram of the tectonic regimes discussed in this work.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Püsök, G. Golabek and S. Labrosse for reading an earlier version of the manuscript. D.L.L. was supported by ETH Zurich grant ETH-46 12-1. A.B.R. and P.J.T. received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 320639 project iGEO. T.G. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreements no. 642029-ITN CREEP and no. 674899 SUBITOP.

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  1. Diogo L. Lourenço

    Present address: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geophysics, Department of Earth Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Diogo L. Lourenço, Antoine B. Rozel, Taras Gerya & Paul J. Tackley

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Contributions

D.L.L., A.B.R and T.G. designed the set of numerical simulations. P.J.T. implemented the eruption–intrusion routines on the convection code and initiated this general research direction. D.L.L. wrote the post-processing routines. D.L.L. and A.B.R. produced the figures. All authors contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Diogo L. Lourenço.

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Lourenço, D.L., Rozel, A.B., Gerya, T. et al. Efficient cooling of rocky planets by intrusive magmatism. Nature Geosci 11, 322–327 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0094-8

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