| Abstract |
The GEOELEC project is funded by Intelligent Energy Europe (IEE) and started in June 2011. GEOELEC aims at assessing the geothermal resources available for the production of electricity within European Union Member states and other peripheral countries. An important parameter for assessing geothermal resources at European scale is the temperature model up to 5 - 10 km depth. As part of GEOELEC, we compiled available data to construct a temperature model. At shallow depth up to 1 km, these data are relatively reliable in large parts of Europe, however the robustness of existing temperature estimation at larger depth is strongly limited, since temperature data from wells are sparse. The temperature at depth is calculated using a forward modeling procedure that incorporates a priori temperature information available in the form of grid data. This routine is based on a preconditioned conjugate gradient method. Here the temperature is calculated using a thermal conductivity and radiogenic heat production structure in combination with boundary conditions including surface heat flow, surface temperature and Moho depth. It is shown that is possible to generate a conduction based, 3D temperature model for different boundary conditions. Fitting the radiogenic heat production to the depth of the Moho in such a way that A is equal to 40% of Q0, yielded the best result in combination with the a priori temperature information. In the this temperature model of Europe, temperatures at 5 km depth vary from 25°C in the areas of the Baltic shield and East European craton, to 340°C in Iceland, with a mean of 111°C. At 10 km depth temperatures vary from 41°C in the areas of the Baltic shield and East European craton to 686°C in Iceland, with a mean of 201°C. The Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ), separating Precambrian and Phanerozoic Europe, causes low temperatures to be mostly restricted to areas north east of the TESZ, while high temperatures occur mostly south west of the TESZ. |