Convective instability of stagnant slabs at the base of the Mantle Transition Zone

Seismic tomography reveals that subducting slabs descend to a depth of about 660 km to stagnate at the base of the mantle transition zone for long timescales. Most of the slab is composed of harzburgite covered by veneers of eclogite and hydrated mantle, a make-up that is positively buoyant overall. Initially, this positive compositional buoyancy is overwhelmed by the negative thermal buoyancy of the cool slab. However, the plate continues to be heated from above and below while it stagnates. Consequently, its thermal buoyancy is expected to slowly increase, turning an initially stable into an unstable thermochemical density stratification, and triggering convective instability. Plumes rising out of stagnating slabs may enhance the transition zone and asthenosphere with compositional heterogeneity, including water, as well as support decompression melting. To study these important processes, we systematically explore the parameters controlling convective instability of stagnating slabs in two-dimensional thermochemical geodynamic models. Preliminary results show that instability occurs at about 50-75 Myr after subduction, a timescale that increases with the age and speed of the subducting plate, as well as Rayleigh number. This timescale is further found to be sensitive to preexisting heterogeneity within the slab, as well as the occurrence of small-scale convection at the base of the overriding plate. The plumes rising out of the slab can deliver only a small fraction of the slab's eclogite to the transition zone, but a larger fraction of the slab's harzburgite and hydrated mantle to the base of the lithosphere, where hydrated lithologies undergo decompression melting in a subset of our models. Most of the slab's eclogite instead settles at the very base of the transition zone. These findings have important implications for the fate of subducted slabs, material transport across the transition zone, the compositional stratification of the mantle as a whole, as well as the origin of intraplate volcanism.