Mantle avalanches in a Venus-like stagnant lid planet

Stagnant lid planets are characterized by a globe-encircling, conducting lid that is thick and strong, which leads to reduced global surface heat flows. Consequently, the mantles of such planets can have warmer interiors than Earth, and interestingly, a pyrolitic mantle composition under warmer conditions is predicted to have a distinctly different mantle transition zone compared to the present-day Earth (Hirose, 2002; Stixrude and Lithgow-Bertelloni, 2011; Ichikawa et al., 2014; Dannberg et al., 2022). Instead of olivine primarily transforming into its higher-pressure polymorphs such as Wadsleyite and then Ringwoodite, at pressures correspon...  more

Stagnant lid planets are characterized by a globe-encircling, conducting lid that is thick and strong, which leads to reduced global surface heat flows. Consequently, the mantles of such planets can have warmer interiors than Earth, and interestingly, a pyrolitic mantle composition under warmer conditions is predicted to have a distinctly different mantle transition zone compared to the present-day Earth (Hirose, 2002; Stixrude and Lithgow-Bertelloni, 2011; Ichikawa et al., 2014; Dannberg et al., 2022). Instead of olivine primarily transforming into its higher-pressure polymorphs such as Wadsleyite and then Ringwoodite, at pressures corresponding to 410km and 520km depth in Earth, respectively, it instead transforms into a mineral assemblage of Wadsleyite, Majorite, and Ferropericlase (WMF), and then to Majorite + Ferropericlase (MF), before finally transforming into Bridgmanite at pressures corresponding to 660km depth in Earth (Stixrude and Lithgow-Bertelloni, 2011; Ichikawa et al., 2014). Convective motions in stagnant lid planets are dominated by small-scale instabilities (cold drips) forming within the mobile rheological sublayer under the rigid lid. Using ASPECT and a thermodynamic model of a pyrolitic mantle composition generated by HeFESTo, we show that under certain conditions, the small drips can pond atop the WMF-MF mineral phase transition. The barrier to convective flow arises from an exotic property of WMF assemblage having a negative thermal expansivity. In contrast to mobile lid planets that recycle their entire lithosphere via large-scale downwellings which pass through the WMF zone without difficulty (Dannberg et al., 2022; Li et al., 2024), the WMF zone in stagnant lid planets is capable of causing an ephemeral layering of the mantle. Our numerical models show that in stagnant lid planets with mantle potential temperatures that exceed 1900K, the smaller, cold drips from the lid continue to pile up until enough of them have coalesced that they collectively avalanche as a larger instability into the deeper interior.