Articles | Volume 17, issue 13
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-5057-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-5057-2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Development and technical paper
| 
03 Jul 2024
Development and technical paper |
| 03 Jul 2024
| 03 Jul 2024
Automatic adjoint-based inversion schemes for geodynamics: reconstructing the evolution of Earth's mantle in space and time
Sia Ghelichkhan
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Institute for Water Futures, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Angus Gibson
Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
D. Rhodri Davies
Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
Stephan C. Kramer
Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK
David A. Ham
Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London, UK
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Melting ice sheets drive solid Earth deformation and sea-level change on timescales of decades to thousands of years. Here, we present G-ADOPT, which models movement of the solid Earth in response to surface loads. It has flexibility in domain geometry, deformation mechanism parameterisation, and is scalable on high performance computers. Automatic derivation of adjoint sensitivity kernels also provides a means to assimilate historical and modern observations into future sea-level forecasts.
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Firedrake is a state-of-the-art system that automatically generates highly optimised code for simulating finite-element (FE) problems in geophysical fluid dynamics. It creates a separation of concerns between employing the FE method and implementing it. Here, we demonstrate the applicability and benefits of Firedrake for simulating geodynamical flows, with a focus on the slow creeping motion of Earth's mantle over geological timescales, which is ultimately the engine driving our dynamic Earth.
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Short summary
We introduce the Geoscientific ADjoint Optimisation PlaTform (G-ADOPT), designed for inverse modelling of Earth system processes, with an initial focus on mantle dynamics. G-ADOPT is built upon Firedrake, Dolfin-Adjoint and the Rapid Optimisation Library, which work together to optimise models using an adjoint method, aligning them with seismic and geologic datasets. We demonstrate G-ADOPT's ability to reconstruct mantle evolution and thus be a powerful tool in geosciences.
We introduce the Geoscientific ADjoint Optimisation PlaTform (G-ADOPT), designed for inverse...
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