Hotspots and mantle plumes: Some phenomenology

Abstract

The available data, mainly topography, geoid, and heat flow, describing hotspots worldwide are examined to constrain the mechanisms for swell uplift and to obtain fluxes and excess temperatures of mantle plumes. Swell upleft is caused mainly by excess temperatures that move with the lithosphere plate and to a lesser extent hot asthenosphere near the hotspot. The volume, heat, and buoyancy fluxes of hotspots are computed from the cross‐sectional areas of swells, the shapes of noses of swells, and, for on ridge hotspots, the amount of ascending material needed to supply the length of ridge axis which has abnormally high elevation and thick crust. The buoyancy fluxes range over a factor of 20 with Hawaii, 8.7 Mg s−1, the largest. The buoyancy flux for Iceland is 1.4 Mg s−1 which is similar to the flux of Cape Verde. The excess temperature of both on‐ridge and off‐ridge hotspots is around the 200°C value inferred from petrology but is not tightly constrained by geophysical considerations. This observation, the similarity of the fluxes of on‐ridge and offridge plumes, and the tendency for hotspots to cross the ridge indicate that similar plumes are likely to cause both types of hotspots. The buoyancy fluxes of 37 hotspots are estimated; the global buoyancy flux is 50 Mg s−1, which is equivalent to a globally averaged surface heat flow of 4 mWm−2 from core sources and would cool the core at a rate of 50°Cb.y.−1. Based on a thermal model and the assumption that the likelihood of subduction is independent of age, most of the heat from hotspots is unplaced in the lower lithosphere and later subducted.