Thermal impact of magmatism in subduction zones
Abstract
Magmatism in subduction zones builds continental crust and causes most of Earth's subaerial volcanism. The production rate and composition of magmas are controlled by the thermal structure of subduction zones. A range of geochemical and heat flow evidence has recently converged to indicate that subduction zones are hotter at lithospheric depths beneath the arc than predicted by canonical thermomechanical models, which neglect magmatism. We show that this discrepancy can be resolved by consideration of the heat transported by magma. In our one- and two-dimensional numerical models and scaling analysis, magmatic transport of sensible and latent heat locally alters the thermal structure of canonical models by ∼300 K, increasing predicted surface heat flow and mid-lithospheric temperatures to observed values. We find the advection of sensible heat to be larger than the deposition of latent heat. Based on these results we conclude that thermal transport by magma migration affects the chemistry and the location of arc volcanoes.
Citation
Rees Jones , D W , Katz , R F , Tian , M & Rudge , J F 2018 , ' Thermal impact of magmatism in subduction zones ' , Earth and Planetary Science Letters , vol. 481 , pp. 73-79 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2017.10.015
Publication
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0012-821XType
Journal article
Rights
© 2017, Published by Elsevier B.V. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher's policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2017.10.015
Description
Funding: D.R.J. acknowledges research funding through the NERC Consortium grant NE/M000427/1and NERC Standard grant NE/I026995/1.Collections
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