IAG-IASPEI 2017

Presentation information

Poster

IASPEI Symposia » S18. Inner core structure

[S18-P] Poster

Thu. Aug 3, 2017 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM Event Hall (The KOBE Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 2F)

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM

[S18-P-01] GrowYourIC: a step towards reconciling geodynamical models to seismic observations of the inner core

Marine Lasbleis1, Lauren Waszek2, Elizabeth Day3 (1.ELSI, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, 2.Department of Physics, New Mexico State University, NM, USA, 3.Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, UK)

The inner core structure has been well-established from seismic studies, showing heterogeneities at various scales, both radially or laterally. Yet, no geodynamical model has been successful at explaining all the features observed. One of the main limit for that is the lack of tools to compare successfully seismic observations and numerical models.

Here, we present a new Python code to compare models of the inner core structure. The code calculates properties of geodynamical models of the inner core along inner core ray paths, for random or user-specified datasets. It allows easy comparisons between geodynamical models and seismic observation, and provides various representations of models and datasets. As proof of concept, we test models which simulate fast lateral translation, and differential growth, and compare to an example inner core dataset provided with the code that samples the outermost part of the outer core, up to 107km depth. We show that a random dataset with perfect coverage produces the same average results as a real inner core dataset. However, we also find that neither simplistic geodynamical model is able to recreate the inner core seismic observations.

We discuss here the possible applications of this code for various geodynamical models. Comparing the geodynamical models and seismic observations is difficult due to the lack of seismic properties of material in the models. We will discuss how orientations of crystals can be added in this code, to compute as well anisotropy in the inner core models.