Geoid height versus age for symmetric spreading ridges

Abstract

Geoid height‐age relations have been extracted from Geos 3 altimeter data for large areas in the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, southeast Indian, and southeast Pacific oceans. Except for the southeast Pacific area, geoid height decreases approximately linearly with the age of the ocean floor for ages less than about 80 m.y. in agreement with the prediction of an isostatically compensated thermal boundary layer model (Haxby and Turcotte, 1978). The geoid‐age data for 0 to 80 m.y. are consistent with constant slopes of −0.094±0.025, −0.131±0.041, and −0.149±0.028 m/m.y. for the South Atlantic, southeast Indian, and North Atlantic regions, respectively. For ages greater than 80 m.y. the geoid‐age relation for the North Atlantic is nearly flat, indicating a reduction in the rate of boundary layer thickening with age. The uncertainties in the geoid slope‐age estimates are positively correlated with spreading velocity.