AUGURY · Reconstructing Earth’s mantle convection

Knowledge of the state of the Earth mantle and its temporal evolution is fundamental to a variety of disciplines in Earth Sciences, from the internal dynamics to its many expressions in the geological record (postglacial rebound, sea level change, ore deposit, tectonics or geomagnetic reversals). Mantle convection theory is the centerpiece to unravel the present and past state of the mantle. For the past 40 years considerable efforts have been made to improve the quality of numerical models of mantle convection. However, they are still sparsely used to estimate the convective history of the solid Earth, in comparison to ocean or atmospheric models for weather and climate prediction. The main shortcoming is their inability to successfully produce Earth-like seafloor spreading and continental drift self-consistently. Recent convection models have begun to successfully predict these processes (Coltice et al., Science 336, 335-33, 2012). Such breakthrough opens the opportunity to combine high-level data assimilation methodologies and convection models together with advanced tectonic datasets to retrieve Earth's mantle history. The scope of this project is to produce a new generation of tectonic and convection reconstructions, which are key to improve our understanding and knowledge of the evolution of the solid Earth. The development of sustainable high performance numerical models will set new standards for geodynamic data assimilation. The outcome of the AUGURY project will be a new generation of models crucial to a wide variety of disciplines.