Mantle convection

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. The lithosphere is divided into tectonic plates that are continuously being created or consumed at plate boundaries. Accretion occurs as mantle is added to the growing edges of a plate, associated with seafloor spreading. Upwelling beneath the spreading centers is a shallow, rising component of mantle convection and in most cases not directly linked to the global mantle upwelling. The hot material added at spreading centers cools down by conduction and convection of heat as it moves away from the spreading centers. At the consumption edges of the plate, the material has thermally contracted to become dense, and it sinks under its own weight in the process of subduction usually at an oceanic trench. Subduction is the descending component of mantle convection.^[5]

This subducted material sinks through the Earth's interior. Some subducted material appears to reach the lower mantle,^[6] while in other regions this material is impeded from sinking further, possibly due to a phase transition from spinel to silicate perovskite and magnesiowustite, an endothermic reaction.^[7]

The subducted oceanic crust triggers volcanism, although the basic mechanisms are varied. Volcanism may occur due to processes that add buoyancy to partially melted mantle, which would cause upward flow of the partial melt as it decreases in density. Secondary convection may cause surface volcanism as a consequence of intraplate extension^[8] and mantle plumes.^[9] In 1993 it was suggested that inhomogeneities in D" layer have some impact on mantle convection.^[10]