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COMET Webinar: Kevin Wong (University of Leeds / University of Bologna). pyMelt: new pythonic methods for calculating the petrological behaviour of Earth’s melting mantle

Modelling the melting behaviour of Earth’s mantle is important for several reasons. As geoscientists, we aim to learn more about the distribution of volcanoes on Earth and how the magmas feeding volcanic systems are generated. Understanding these things allows us to provide stronger constraints on models of mantle convection and composition. In this webinar I present pyMelt, a new open-source Python library that can be used to calculate the melting behaviour of the mantle. Using pyMelt, we can predict a range of geophysical and petrological observations, including decompression pathways of lithologically heterogeneous mantle, basalt liquidus temperatures, and the trace element compositions of lavas. I demonstrate the potential of pyMelt using a case study: I perform inversions of the pyMelt forward model, constrained by geophysical observations and lava geochemistry, to gauge the geodynamical nature of the melting mantle under the Ethiopian and Afar Rifts. My results demonstrate that the mantle under Ethiopia is hot, and that differences in melting behaviour between these two rift systems can be attributed to relative depth of melting and the composition of the melting mantle. The pyMelt code is available on GitHub, installable via the pip package manager, and has full documentation on readthedocs.

Feb 20, 2023 03:00 PM in London