Resolving the Mantle Plume Heat Transfer Discrepancy

Estimates of the buoyancy and heat flux of upwelling mantle plumes are important for understanding many aspects of convection within the Earth. These fluxes influence melt productivity and geochemistry at mid-oceanic spreading centres and hotspots, dynamic topography, mantle mixing timescales and Earth's bulk heat budget. The majority of existing plume flux estimates are calculated from the cross-sectional area of swells multiplied by either plate velocities or spreading rates. Hawaii and the other Pacific hotspots dominate these estimates, which indicate a total heat flux carried by plumes to the base of plates at ∼ 2 TW. Here, we use an alternative approach that calculates buoyancy flux using the swell volume constrained from a new map of dynamic topography, scaled by a characteristic swell decay time. This method avoids the assumption that plume material moves at or below the velocity of the overriding plate. Our results indicate that the Icelandic plume has a buoyancy flux of ∼ 27 ± 4 Mg/s , which is significantly larger than the Hawaiian plume and an order of magnitude greater than some previous estimates. These new values match independent geophysical constraints from Hawaii and the North Atlantic Ocean. All magmatic and amagmatic swells have been included in our global analysis, which reveals a total heat flux carried to the base of the plates of ∼ 10 ± 2 TW. This increased global heat flux is consistent with recent global seismic tomographic images of large upwelling plumes in the mid-mantle and predictions of heat flux through the core-mantle boundary.