Towards integrated numerical models of lithospheric-scale magmatic systems

Understanding the dynamics of magmatic systems requires numerical models that take the physics of the involved processes into account and allows interpreting geophysical and geological data in a consistent manner.  In climate science, a similar venture started over 5 decades ago with the generation of the first quantitative climate models, which has been indispensable in our understanding of the ongoing climate change. A similar effort for magmatic systems does not yet exist, even when many processes can already be described quantitatively.

Here, we will discuss recent progress towards creating a modelling framework to simulate magmatic systems, developed as part of the ERC MAGMA project. We initiated several open-source packages in the Julia programming language that significantly simplifies creating new codes that simulate different processes and run on both workstations and high-performance GPU systems.

This makes it straightforward to create a 3D model of a particular system taking available data into account (using GeophysicalModelGenerator.jl), use that as input for 3D models that link uplift/gravity data with dynamic models (using LaMEM), or simulate the thermal evolution and zircon age distribution following the intrusion of dikes & sills (using MagmaThermoKinematics.jl). One can easily switch the employed rheologies/parameterisations in the FEM or finite difference simulations, create synthetic seismic velocity models from the output (using GeoParams.jl) or account for the evolving chemistry of the magmatic system (using MAGEMin_C.jl).

In this presentation, we will discuss implementation details and show that the use of GeoParams, for example, slows down pseudo-transient codes (as expected) but not substantially, whereas it results in much shorter codes.