Temperature-dependent thermal diffusivity of the Earth’s crust and implications for magmatism

Alan G. Whittington (), Anne M. Hofmeister and Peter I. Nabelek
Additional contact information
Alan G. Whittington: University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA
Anne M. Hofmeister: Washington University, St Louis, Missouri 63130, USA
Peter I. Nabelek: University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211, USA

Nature, 2009, vol. 458, issue 7236, 319-321

Abstract: The Earth's crust: wrap-up warm The rate of heat transfer by conduction is the dominant factor that determines the thermal evolution of planetary crust and lithosphere. Most thermal models of the Earth's crust assume constant values for thermal diffusivity, owing to large experimental uncertainties in measuring this property of rocks at high temperature. Whittington et al. have used recent advances in laser-flash analysis on three different crustal rocks types to show that thermal diffusivity strongly decreases with increasing temperature. They find thermal diffusivity to be about half that commonly assumed at mid-crustal temperatures and therefore conclude that the hot middle and lower crust is a much more effective thermal insulator than previously thought. They also present models of lithospheric thermal evolution during continental collision, and demonstrate that the temperature dependence of rock properties leads to a positive feedback between strain heating in shear zones and more efficient thermal insulation, removing the requirement for unusually high radiogenic heat production to achieve crustal melting temperatures.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07818 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:458:y:2009:i:7236:d:10.1038_nature07818

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature07818

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().