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The concept of the lithosphere as Earth's strong outer layer was described by the English mathematician A. E. H. Love in his 1911 monograph "Some problems of Geodynamics" and further developed by the American geologist Joseph Barrell, who wrote a series of papers about the concept and introduced the term "lithosphere".
Plates in the crust of Earth. Earth's crust is its thick outer shell of rock, referring to less than one percent of the planet's radius and volume.It is the top component of the lithosphere, a solidified division of Earth's layers that includes the crust and the upper part of the mantle. [1]
The five components of the climate system all interact. They are the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the lithosphere and the biosphere. [1]: 1451 Earth's climate system is a complex system with five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things).
Earth's mantle is a layer of silicate rock between the crust and the outer core. It has a mass of 4.01 × 10 24 kg (8.84 × 10 24 lb) and makes up 67% of the mass of Earth. [ 1 ] It has a thickness of 2,900 kilometers (1,800 mi) [ 1 ] making up about 46% of Earth's radius and 84% of Earth's volume.
The crust and the cold, rigid, top of the upper mantle are collectively known as the lithosphere, which is divided into independently moving tectonic plates. [132] Beneath the lithosphere is the asthenosphere, a relatively low-viscosity layer on which the lithosphere rides.
The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface (both lands and oceans), known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates (which create weather features such as clouds and hazes), all retained by Earth's gravity.
The increase in temperature with increasing depth is known as the geothermal gradient and is gradual within the rheological boundary layer. In practice, the RBL is defined by the depth at which the viscosity of the mantle rocks drops below ~ 10 21 P a ⋅ s . {\displaystyle 10^{21}Pa\cdot s.} .
Only beneath mid-ocean ridges does it define the lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary (the depth at which the mantle becomes significantly ductile). The Mohorovičić discontinuity is 5 to 10 kilometres (3–6 mi) below the ocean floor , and 20 to 90 kilometres (10–60 mi) beneath typical continental crusts, with an average of 35 kilometres ...