Polar wandering of a dynamic earth.

Details Polar wandering of a dynamic earth. Polar wandering of a dynamic earth.

May 1993

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1993geoji.113..284r&link_type=abstract

Geophysical Journal International, Vol. 113, No. 2, p. 284 - 298

Physics

48

Scientific paper

The rotational behaviour of a stratified visco-elastic planet submitted to changes in its inertia tensor is studied in a viscous quasi-fluid approximation. This approximation allows for large displacements of the Earth rotation axis with respect to the entire mantle but is only valid for mass redistribution within the planet occurring on the time scale of a few million years. Such a motion, called true polar wander (TPW), is detected by palaeomagneticiens assuming that the Earth's magnetic field remains on average aligned with the spin axis. The authors' model shows that a downgoing cold slab induces a TPW which quickly brings this slab to the pole for a mantle of uniform viscosity. The same slab is slowly moved toward the equator when a large viscosity increase with depth takes place in the mantle. The model is also suitable to investigate the effects of a non-steady-state convection on the Earth's rotation. The authors discuss these effects using a simple mass redistribution model inspired by the pioneering paper of Goldreich and Toomre (1969).

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