Mantle convection: Sluggish dynamics at depth

The discovery of a very high viscosity layer deep in the Earth's lower mantle has significant implications for our understanding of the Earth's solid interior. Forte and Mitrovica propose that surface geophysical data imply the existence of a sharply increased viscosity near 2,000 km depth in the mantle, and that this layer in Earth's lower mantle has a profound influence on the depth-dependent pattern of the thermal convective flow.

Deep-mantle high-viscosity flow and thermochemical structure inferred from seismic and geodynamic data
ALESSANDRO M. FORTE & JERRY X. MITROVICA
Nature 410, 1049-1056 (26 April 2001)
| Summary | Full Text | PDF (795 K) | Supplementary Information |

26 April 2001 table of contents