Ancient dynamos of terrestrial planets more sensitive to core-mantle boundary heat flows

Abstract

The early dynamos of Earth and Mars probably operated without an inner core being present. They were thus exclusively driven by secular cooling and radiogenic heating, whereas the present geodynamo is thought to be predominantly driven by buoyancy fluxes which arise from the release of latent heat and the compositional enrichment associated with inner core solidification. The impact of the inner core growth on the ancient geodynamo has been discussed extensively but is still controversial. The Martian dynamo stopped operating more than 4Gyr ago but left its signature in the form of a strong crustal magnetization that is much stronger in the southern than in the northern hemisphere. This dichotomy can, for example, be explained by a dynamo predominantly operating in the southern hemisphere due to a heterogeneous heat flux through the core-mantle boundary (CMB). The early Martian dynamo may also have operated without an inner core being present. Here we explore the impact of lateral CMB heat flux variations on dynamos with and without an inner core by comparing numerical dynamos driven by homogeneous internal sources or by bottom buoyancy sources, arising from the inner core boundary (ICB). Three different CMB heat-flux patterns are tested that either break the northern/southern or the azimuthal symmetry. In the dynamos driven by internal heating a rather small CMB heat-flux heterogeneity suffices to break internal symmetries and leads to boundary-induced structures and different field strengths. The effect is much smaller for dynamos driven by ICB buoyancy sources. Our results indicate that the field intensity and morphology of the ancient dynamos of Earth or Mars were more variable and more sensitive to the thermal CMB structure than the geodynamo after onset of inner core growth.