Ridge Outgassing and Melt Production from 4Ga to Present

The majority of Earth's volcanism occurs at ocean ridges via decompression melting. This process exerts a strong control on the mantle and surface volatile contents throughout Earth history. In this study, we investigate mantle temperature, ridge melt production, and ridge CO2 outgassing from 4 Ga to present by coupling an analytical mantle convection model (Crowley and O'Connell 2012) with a recent petrologic model of peridotite melting in the presence of CO2 (Dasgupta et al. 2013). By taking advantage of the computational efficiency of the convection model, we simulate time-dependent convection with a large suite of realistic mantle and lithospheric parameters to produce a full range of possible thermal histories. We only accept models which evolve from stagnant-lid convection to mobile-lid convection in order to be consistent with previous geodynamic modeling and geochemical studies (ie Condie et al …