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Published Online December 4, 2003
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1092485

Research Articles

Submitted on October 10, 2003
Accepted on November 18, 2003

Finite-Frequency Tomography Reveals a Variety of Plumes in the Mantle

Raffaella Montelli 1*, Guust Nolet 1, F. A. Dahlen 1, Guy Masters 2, E. Robert Engdahl 3, Shu-Huei Hung 4

1 Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
2 Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
3 Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
4 Department of Geosciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: montelli{at}princeton.edu.

We present tomographic evidence for the existence of deep mantle thermal convection plumes. P-wave velocity images show at least six well-resolved plumes that extend into the lowermost mantle: Ascension, Azores, Canary, Easter, Samoa and Tahiti. Other less well-resolved plumes, including Hawaii, may also reach the lowermost mantle. We also see several plumes that are mostly confined to the upper mantle, suggesting that convection may be partially separated into two depth regimes. All of the observed plumes have diameters of several hundred km, indicating that plumes convey a significant fraction of the internal heat escaping from the Earth.


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