Mantle Convection

Mantle convection is the slow creeping motion of Earth's rocky mantle caused by convection currents carrying heat from the interior of the Earth to the surface. The Earth's surface lithosphere, which rides atop the asthenosphere (the two components of the upper mantle), is divided into a number of plates that are continuously being created and consumed at their opposite plate boundaries. Accretion occurs as mantle is added to the growing edges of a plate, usually associated with seafloor spreading. This hot added material cools down by conduction and convection of heat. 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 at an ocean trench.

This subducted material sinks to a depth of 660 kilometres (410 mi) in the Earth's interior where it is impeded from sinking further, possibly due to a phase change from spinel to silicate perovskite and magnesiowustite, an endothermic reaction.

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 causing an upward flow due to a decrease in density of the partial melt.

Secondary forms of convection that may result in surface volcanism are postulated to occur as a consequence of intraplate extension and mantle plumes.

It is because the mantle can convect that the tectonic plates are able to move around the Earth's surface.

Mantle convection seems to have been much more active during the Hadean period, resulting in gravitational sorting of heavier molten iron, and nickel elements and sulphides in the core, and lighter iron and aluminium silicates in the mantle.