Plate tectonics, flood basalts and the evolution of Earth's oceans

Abstract

The chemical composition of the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) indicates that the present-day thermal budget of Earth is likely to be characterized by a significant excess of surface heat loss over internal heat generation, indicating an important role of secular cooling in Earth's history. When combined with petrological constraints on the degree of secular cooling, this thermal budget places a tight constraint on permissible heat-flow scaling for mantle convection, along with implications for the operation of plate tectonics on Earth, the history of mantle plumes and flood basalt magmatism, and the origin and evolution of Earth's oceans. In the presence of plate tectonics, hotter mantle may have convected more slowly because it generates thicker dehydrated lithosphere, which could slow down subduction. The intervals of globally synchronous orogenies are consistent with the predicted variation of plate velocity for the last 3.6Gyr. Hotter mantle also produces thicker, buoyant basaltic crust, and the subductability of oceanic lithosphere is a critical factor regarding the emergence of plate tectonics before the Proterozoic. Moreover, sluggish convection in the past is equivalent to reduced secular cooling, thus suggesting a more minor role of mantle plumes in the early Earth. Finally, deeper ocean basins are possible with slower plate motion in the past, and Earth's oceans in the Archean is suggested to have had about twice as much water as today, and the mantle may have started as dry and have been gradually hydrated by subduction. The global water cycle may thus be dominated by regassing, rather than degassing, pointing towards the impact origin of Earth's oceans, which is shown to be supported by the revised composition of the BSE. © 2008 Blackwell Publishing.