Russian Geology and Geophysics 51 (2010) 587591 www.elsevier.

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Constructing a truly global model of Earths dynamics: basic principles *

V.E. Khain
Geological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pyzhevskii per. 7, Moscow, 119017, Russia Received 16 June 2009; accepted 16 November 2009

Abstract This is a snapshot of the todays views of the Earth with its geospheres, and terrestrial and extraterrestrial triggers of its dynamics and energy sources. Along with the presented brief historic outline of the planetary evolution, these data can make basis for creating in the future a truly global model of the Earths dynamics and evolution. 2010, V.S. Sobolev IGM, Siberian Branch of the RAS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Earths evolution; planetary structure; geospheres; global model of Earths dynamics

Introduction Understanding the Earths structure and dynamics has been the principal challenge for natural sciences since the latest Renaissance. Many prominent thinkers have tackled the problem, among them Ren Descartes in the 1630s, James Hutton since the 1760s, Osmond Fisher in 1881, and later Frank Taylor, Alfred Wegener, Arthur Holmes, and the founders of plate tectonics through the 20th century. However, it is not until the turn of the last century that the collected data of seismic tomography, GPS, comparative planetology, and isotope geochemistry have opened avenues to creating a truly global model of the Earth relying upon a solid mathematical background. Explaining the Earth, with overall complexity of its interior and diversity of its driving geological mechanisms, is a task by no means surmountable for a single scientist, were he ever so genius, but requires joint international efforts of many specialists, experts in Earth sciences as well as in biology, astronomy, etc. At the time being it appears already possible to outline the basic ways and constraints of this modeling. This is what the paper is about which is a synthesis of my earlier ideas on the subject (e.g., Khain, 2003; Khain and Goncharov, 2006). Principal issues of global dynamics modeling 1. A global model of the Earths dynamics should include actual and historic aspects. The former concerns with the * Corresponding person: Eugene V. Khain.
E-mail address: khain@ginras.ru (E.V. Khain)

Deceased.

Earths present parameters and processes (geoid shape, current vertical and horizontal movements, seismicity, volcanism, climate change, dynamics of the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere). The historic aspect implies retrospective inventory of the Earths history since its origin, and possible prehistory, as well as predictions for future trends (there have been some attempts of such predictions, e.g., by Trubitsyn (2008)). 2. The Earth is an open nonequilibrium self-organizing complex system (Anderson et al., 2002), its constituents (different geospheres) being the subsystems. They are, namely, the inner and outer core, the lower, middle, and upper mantle, asthenosphere, lithosphere, crust, cryosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere (troposphere plus stratosphere), ionosphere, plasmasphere and, of course, the biosphere. Each geosphere has its specific phase state, chemistry, and internal dynamics (Pushcharovskii and Pushcharovskii, 1999). Some of them have no distinct bounds but penetrate one into another, such as the cryosphere and the lithosphere or the hydrosphere and the lithosphere, and the biosphere relative to the systems of rocks, water, and air. There are spheres that envelop the planet and extend outside its limits, such as the magnetosphere and the biosphere (especially lately, in the epoch of space exploration). 3. The geosphere boundaries are not always smooth and sharp but can vary within a few tens or hundreds of kilometers and change their position with time as a function of deep heat flux through their different parts. However, this fact does not preclude relative horizontal motion of some spheres over the others, which has been proven, for example, for the inner/outer core and core/mantle boundaries (Mound and Buffett, 2002), or for the lithosphere and the asthenosphere. This motion may be driven by external gravity effects (Barkin, 2005) and be

1068-7971/$ - see front matter D 2010, V . S. Sabolev IGM, Siberian Branch of the RAS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.rgg.2010.05.001

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due to the misfit between the Earths gravity and geometric centers. The geospheres are, on the one hand, independent, the processes in them being specific and their dynamics varying broadly from very slow motion in the mantle to very fast cyclonic circulation in the atmosphere. On the other hand, each sphere is subject to influence from the neighbor spheres inside and outside the planet (especially, in view of global heat and mass transfer). 4. The Earths dynamics is maintained by its heat store most of which remains from the time of its origin though has been replenished in the course of the planet history. The Earth had gained its original heat mainly from planetesimal collisions, and some from differentiation into geospheres which began already during those collisions and included, specifically, the formation of the core within first hundreds of million years of the Earths history. The differentiation of the planetary material still continues: this is crust production out of mantle, formation of the inner core out of the outer core, and the mantle input to the core. Another source is interior heat released in natural decay of radioactive chemical elements, both existing (U, Th, Rb, Sr) and extinct in the earliest hundreds of million years (some I and Al isotopes). One more heat source is associated with the gravity action of the Sun and the Moon that generates tides whose dissipation is attendant with mechanic-to-thermal energy conversion. The contributions of the four heat sources have been decreasing through geological time, and the Earth has been generally cooling (at 70100 C per billion years on the surface). This cooling is not too dramatic but has significant geodynamic consequences. More interior heat may also release in friction at the boundaries of geospheres that are rotating at different velocities (Letnikov, 2001). The exterior spheres, including the biosphere, feed from sunlight, its radiation being three times the heat flux from the Earths interior. Unlike the waning interior heat, solar radiation has been increasing as the Suns luminosity is growing. Thus, the relative contributions from the internal and external heat sources have changed through time. 5. The present stratification of the planet has been evolving since its origin (Kogarko and Khain, 2001; Pushcharovskii and Pushcharovskii, 2007). However, most of the progress was in the early history, as almost all basic units (core, mantle, crust, hydrosphere, and atmosphere) had formed by the Early Archean, and the magnetosphere and the biosphere appeared no later than the Middle Archean. The Earth developed its solid inner core somewhere between 3.2 and 2.0 Ga, and the D layer no later than 2.72.5 Ga ago, as one may infer from the ages of first alkaline rocks derived from D or produced by recycling of lithosphere which subducted to that depth. The asthenosphere may have been inherited from the primary magma ocean (see below) having built, together with the lithosphere, the tectosphere in the earliest Archean. 6. The interior heat and gravity are the basic driving forces of the solid Earth dynamics. They maintain the buoyancy rising of hot material from the lowermost mantle and the sinking of cooled slabs back into the mantle as deep as D.

The mantle flow is directed from the spreading axes of mid-ocean ridges toward subduction zones in the upper strata and oppositely, from subduction zones to the roots of the rising mantle plumes (Burke et al., 2008), at the mantle base (Maruyama, 2007). The combination of these ascending and descending counter flows of material produces global mantle convection which repeatedly takes dominance of the Earths evolution. This happens, namely, when all continental crust available at a certain time amalgamates in a single supercontinent surrounded with the oceanic Panthalassa. The first supercontinent appeared in the latest Archean (2.72.5 Ga), though smaller sialic blobs may have been their precursors since the Early Archean. Later on, supercontinents reassembled and broke up every ~400 Myr or more, and the last was Late PaleozoicEarly Mesozoic Wegeners Pangea. The time spans between Karelian Pangea (1.71.8 Ga), Rodinia (1.1 1.0 Ga), and latest Pangea (0.30.2 Ga) were about 600 700 Ma, but there was also Gondwana at ~0.6 Ga, and some other events may be unknown (Khain and Goncharov, 2006). This periodicity in assembly and dispersal of continents is called Wilsons cycles. The consolidating supercontinents were presumably encircled by a continuous (or almost continuous) zone of subduction, where the oceanic slabs were sucked into. The subducted material heated up in the center of that zone as a result of heating under the insulating shield of continental lithosphere, and thus gave rise to superplumes, which rose, impinged against the lithospheric base, caused uplift and deformation, and allowed smaller plumes to rise to the surface through rifted lithosphere. The largest of those subsidiary plumes produced Large Igneous Provinces (LIP) of continental flood basalts. The plume activity was favorable for further continent breakup, rifting, and spreading with the ensuing formation of Atlantic-type oceans, volcanic arcs, and backarc basins, all these processes being governed by a higher-order convection and a related 200-Myr periodicity known as the Bertrand cycles. The latter, in turn, may have included smaller cycles produced by convection of still higher orders on oceanic periphery (Khain and Goncharov, 2006). The oceans eventually closed as the earlier dispersed continental blocks collided, and fold-thrust belts formed along the sutures in place of the oceans. The sutures, in their hottest parts, may have been subject to highest-order (local) convection corresponding to Stilles cycles. That, in turn, led to reassembly of a new supercontinent and to resumed whole-mantle convection. The process was nonuniform, and became more intense at the time of transitions from scattered (local) to whole-mantle (global) convection, in which slabs that stacked at the lower-upper mantle boundary dumped into the lower mantle below 660 670 km in so-called avalanches (Kotelkin and Lobkovskii, 2008) by the slab suction mechanism. 7. Earths spin is an important geodynamic agent. Its velocity changes periodically whereby the orbital parameters change as well, with cycles of 21, 40, 100, 400, and 1200 kyr. These are the Milankovitch cycles of precession, obliquity, and eccentricity which he invoked first to explain ice ages. Another consequence of the Earths rotation is the Coriolis

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force and the respective lag of lithospheric plates behind the faster WE rotation of the planets interior (westerly rotational drag). The rotation is likewise responsible for the asymmetry of the NS mid-ocean ridges (Scoppola et al., 2006). Furthermore, it stands behind the difference in the behavior of the polar and equatorial domains, with boundaries about 40 N and 40 S and oppositely directed transgressions and regressions (Odesskii, 2004), high seismicity, and highly rugged relief (Levin, 2002). It appears quite obvious that systems of WE transforms across the NS spreading mid-ocean ridges are related with the Earths rotation as well. It appears quite obvious that systems of WE transforms across the NS spreading mid-ocean ridges are related with the Earths rotation as well; the NS and oblique transforms of the Indian and Indian-Antarctic ocean may be associated with northward continent drift. In addition to the westerly drift, the joint action of the rotational drag and mantle convection drive continents alternately northward or southward and cause stress alternation in the two poles, with dominant present compression and subsidence in the Arctic opposed to extension and uplift in the Antarctic (Goncharov, 2009). The same mechanism may have bearing on the fact that supercontinents formed alternately in the Northern or Southern Hemispheres (Bozhko and Barkin, 2009; Korenaga, 2008). The nonuniform rotation of the Earth, with periodic acceleration and deceleration, have another consequence of changing the geoid (its oblate shape) and, especially, producing lithospheric stress. The latter is often assumed to be the only cause of the worldwide regmatic shear pattern of faults, fractures, and lineaments making regular nets oriented orthogonally or obliquely to the geoid. One more point worth of mentioning is the recently discovered link between the core dynamics and the Earths rotation behavior (Rogister and Valette, 2009). 8. As noted above, the geospheres behave independently and, on the other hand, are in active interaction. Though acting in different ways and at different scales, this interaction is evidence of the planetary system integrity. There has been increasingly understood that the behavior of the inner core, independent of the outer core and other geospheres, exerts influence on lithospheric processes, especially on seismicity (Levin, 2002; Levin and Sasorova, 2009). The two halves of the inner core were discovered to be rheologically dissimilar, possibly, as a result of nonuniform crystallization of its surface under the effect from the outer core base. This lack of uniformity may trigger change in the outer-core convection and may show up at the lower-mantle or shallower depths (Aubert et al., 2008), being possibly responsible for the hypothetical cyclonic rotation of the mantle beneath Asia (Malyshkov and Malyshkov, 2009). Large lithospheric earthquakes result in high radon emanation along seismogenic faults, which can rise as high as the ionosphere and thus make earthquakes detectable at that height. It has been reasonably assumed since long ago that the Earths elevation pattern results from lithospheric deformation controlled by deep-seated mechanisms, but it is not until

recently that the surface processes were found out to influence the astenosphere and the ductile lower crust. For instance, the postglacial rebound causes decompression of asthenosphere and triggers magmatic and seismic activity, as well as further mountain growth. Global change as a consequence of the neotectonic mountain building since the latest Eocene led to greater moisture on the slopes of the growing ranges, with the ensuing acceleration of erosion and further rapid growth of the Himalayas in the places where they became cut by the Ganges and the Brahmaputra. The growth of the Andes caused climate drying in the East Pacific coast, a decrease in moisture input into the PeruChili trench, and, reciprocally, increased the effect of the Pacific subduction on the mountain growth. Thus, there is a feedback between deep-seated and surficial processes, which furnishes examples of interaction between the Earths geospheres. 9. The biosphere is a special sphere of the Earth. Since its origin at ~3.5 Ga, or maybe earlier, it has been an ever more critical agent in the planetary evolution, up to the culmination with the advent of Homo sapiens and the initiation of the noosphere. However, the pace of biosphere evolution has been very uneven. Early in its history, for two billion years before the first appearance of eukaryotes in the Middle Paleoproterozoic and metazoans in the Mesoproterozoic, the progress was restricted to mere biomass increase. They were two explosions of the Ediacaran and Early Cambrian biota as late as 600550 Ma that gave rise to the diverse higher life, whose Phanerozoic history was likewise very unsteady being repeatedly interrupted (at least ten times) by great extinctions and inceptions of new taxa. Most important biotic events occurred at the Permian/Triassic and Cretaceous/Paleogene boundaries and may have had both terrestrial (volcanism) and extraterrestrial (bolid impact) triggers. The very emergence of the biosphere remains enigmatic, and may stem either from the Earth or from outside. Scientists are still not sure whether life exists at least on some of the hundreds of other planets that have been discovered recently in the outer space, but if it exists, it is most likely very primitive, as is the case of Mars (Zimmer, 2009). The Earth was able to develop life due to its advantageous position in the Solar System, as well as due to the fact, that having once appeared, the biota itself has been an active climate agent changing, within life-friendly limits, the air temperature and the contents of atmospheric gases, especially, carbon dioxide and oxygen (Lovelock, 1988). The idea by V.I. Vernadsky that the life activity controlled the formation and the composition of both the sedimentary and the granite-metamorphic layers of the crust has been receiving ever more support. 10. The Earth is open to effects from both the interplanetary (low-orbit) and intergalactic space. The most spectacular examples of the interplanetary effects are the solar and lunar tides, bolids, as well as the solar wind and magnetic activity. The role of solid Earth tides (mainly lunar ones) was previously underestimated being thought to decrease progressively through the planets history; the mechanic effect from the tides was assumed to dissipate in the lithosphere in the

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same way as in the ocean. According to recent evidence, however, the tides, together with convection, can be essential geodynamic agents, and the distance between the Earth and the Moon, though generally increasing, occasionally became shorter. The latter phenomenon has received recent attention as a possible cause of cyclicity in tectonic and eustatic events (Avsyuk, 2001). As for the bolid impact, the impact craters (called astroblems by R. Ditz) have been increasingly often discovered, both on the land and in the ocean. The impacts of this kind are known to have been periodically intensified through the Phanerozoic and, probably, also through the earlier Earths history. Many scientists invoke them as possible triggers of biotic events, and some (e.g., Isley and Abbott, 2002) suggest their linkage with plume activity responsible, specifically, for the origin of large igneous provinces. Another remarkable point is the correlation of seismic and volcanic activity on the Earth with the 11- and 22-year cycles of solar activity, which was discovered by A.L. Chizhevsky and has been supported by recent data (Khain and Khalilov, 2009). 11. As for the intergalactic forcing, the Bertrand tectonic cycle was noted long ago to have a duration similar to the galactic year, i.e., the orbital period of the Solar System rotating about the Galaxy center, 200250 Myr. Our Galaxy being nonuniform and helical, stars and gas-dust nebulas in it are distributed very unevenly. The Solar System moving on the elliptical galactic orbit experiences periodic contraction and expansion, as well as magnetic and gravity changes. These periodic changes may control the deep-seated and surface processes on the Earth, including the biosphere dynamics. Or, more influence may come from the points when the Galaxys spiral arms bearing most of its matter cross the Solar System. Furthermore, the Solar System may periodically approach large gas-dust clusters at every 300500 Myr, or, at a period commensurate with the Wilson cycle. Thus, during its motion on the galactic orbit as part of the Solar System, the Earth must undergo periodic effects from the ambient space (Nechaev, 2004; Sankaran, 2008). The intergalactic effects may include also impacts of galactic comets (Barenbaum, 2002) the Earth might be subject to besides the bolid impacts. The material of these comets apparently dissipates in the atmosphere above the Earths surface, but the very high-velocity impact should show up anyhow, and that may have been the case of the Tunguska event of 1908. The geodynamic implications of the galactic comet impact remain unclear but its very possibility is to be taken into account. Still more enigmatic is the effect from the so-called long gravity waves which were predicted by A. Einstein and have been a subject of search by American astrophysicists. 12. There are several stages in the Earths history that lack proper understanding. The first stage, the Eogean, coincides with the Hadean eon, and was the time when the originally homogeneous Earth first developed its iron core and silicate mantle, with formation of the magma ocean, the primitive (possibly, basaltic) crust, and the ammonia-methane atmos-

phere. The emergence of the hydrosphere and the biosphere during that eon is questionable. The eon presumably ended with disastrous bolid bombardment and ensuing overturn of the magma ocean and complete recycling of the primitive crust. The second stage of Archaeogean corresponds to the Early and Middle Archean of the classical ICS time scale, when the hydrosphere definitely emerged. Then it was formation of the magnetosphere and the biosphere and production of TTG protocontinental crust which likely clustered in the equatorial belt and then dispersed, having left its fragments to be found now among rocks of different continents. During the third stage, the Protogean, corresponding to the Late Archean, the fragments of the protocontinent became surrounded with volcanic arcs and greenstone belts and transformed into granitic greenstone provinces. The crust and the lithosphere approached their present thicknesses and became prone to brittle deformation and injection of mafic dikes through the stable fault net; metamorphism in the lower crust reached the granulite facies, normal K-Na granites melted out of the middle crust, and alkaline rocks appeared, coming possibly from the lower mantle. That was the onset of plate tectonics, with spreading and subduction. The end of the stage (2.72.5 Ga) was marked by the assembly of the Earths first supercontinent with a sedimentary (detrital-carbonate) and volcanic cover, and by the earliest continental glaciation. The fourth stage, the Deuterogean, spanning the Early and Middle Proterozoic, began with the breakup of the first supercontinent, the emergence of free oxygen, and the inception of eukaryotes and then the metazoans. The continent dispersal produced oceans which, in turn, closed to form orogens that are currently recorded in granulite-gneiss belts. Ocean closure led to another supercontinent amalgamation at 1.91.7 Ga. The supercontinent was subject to rapakivi-granite plutonism and injection of diamond-bearing kimberlites, and it partly broke up in the Middle Mesoproterozoic. It transformed into a later supercontinent known as Rodinia, whose consolidation culminated at the Mesoproterozoic/Neoproterozoic boundary. The Neogean, the last stage of the planet history, fully governed by the plate tectonics, encompasses the Neoproterozoic and the Phanerozoic. It started with the Rodinia dispersal, which had completed 850750 Ma ago and gave rise to several oceans (Pacific, Iapetus, Prototethys, and Paleoasian). The large continent of Gondwana formed in the Southern Hemisphere at the Neoproterozoic/Cambrian boundary and then joined with continents of the Northern Hemisphere into Pangea, the Earths last supercontinent. The dispersal of Pangea began in the Early Jurassic (200180 Ma) and eventually led to the present framework of continents and oceans. In the long run one may expect that the interior activity of the planet will die out, the lithosphere will no longer be split into plates, magmatism will fade, and the Earth will turn into a planet similar to present Mars. 13. All geological and geodynamic processes and events on the Earth have been cyclic. There are cycles of about

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twenty different orders: diurnal and seasonal, 11 and 22-year corresponding to solar activity (Chizhevskys cycles), orbital cycles of Milankovitch, Vails eustatic cycles, cycles of Stille, Bertrand, Wilson, and finally the 800900-Myr cycles suggested by Goncharov (Khain and Goncharov, 2006), with alternated northward and southward continent drift and reassembly of supercontinents either in the Northern or Southern Hemispheres (Bozhko and Barkin, 2009). Extraterrestrial controls have been proven for at least some of these cycles (e.g., those of Chizhevsky and Bertrand) and may work in the case of others as well. Thus, there might be some universal extraterrestrial mechanism responsible for their origin (Karpenko, 2004), and search for this mechanism is a challenge for future science. The manuscript profited much from constructive criticism by N.L. Dobretsov.

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Editorial responsibility: N.L. Dobretsov