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Mantle convection is the very slow creep of Earth's solid silicate mantle as convection currents carry heat from the interior to the planet's surface. [2] [3] Mantle convection causes tectonic plates to move around the Earth's surface. [4] The Earth's lithosphere rides atop the asthenosphere, and the two form the components of the upper mantle ...
Subduction slabs drive plate tectonics by pulling along the lithosphere to which they attach in a process known as slab pull and by inducing currents in the mantle via slab suction. [2] The slab affects the convection and evolution of the Earth's mantle due to the insertion of the hydrous oceanic lithosphere. [3]
The lithosphere is cooler and more rigid, while the asthenosphere is hotter and flows more easily. In terms of heat transfer, the lithosphere loses heat by conduction, whereas the asthenosphere also transfers heat by convection and has a nearly adiabatic temperature gradient.
Age of oceanic lithosphere; youngest (light colour) is along spreading centers. Seafloor spreading, or seafloor spread, is a process that occurs at mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves away from the ridge.
Tectonic plates are composed of the oceanic lithosphere and the thicker continental lithosphere, each topped by its own kind of crust. Along convergent plate boundaries, the process of subduction carries the edge of one plate down under the other plate and into the mantle. This process reduces the total surface area (crust) of the Earth.
Subduction zone physics: Sinking of the oceanic lithosphere (sediments, crust, mantle), by the contrast of density between the cold and old lithosphere and the hot asthenospheric mantle wedge, is the strongest force (but not the only one) needed to drive plate motion and is the dominant mode of mantle convection.
This thickening occurs by conductive cooling, which converts hot asthenosphere into lithospheric mantle and causes the oceanic lithosphere to become increasingly thick and dense with age. In fact, oceanic lithosphere is a thermal boundary layer for the convection [10] in the mantle. The thickness of the mantle part of the oceanic lithosphere ...
In this framework, the LAB separates the two heat transport regimes [conduction vs. convection]. [5] However, the transition from a domain that transports heat primarily through convection in the asthenosphere to the conducting lithosphere is not necessarily abrupt and instead encompasses a broad zone of mixed or temporally variable heat transport.