How do convection currents drive the movement of tectonic plates and atmospheric and oceanic circulation determine regional climate?
In both instances, heat rises and that sets the clock ticking, so to speak.
In the Earth's interior there is tremendous heat, inherited by the collision of particles that created the planet in the first place.
You don't have to push rocks to create mountains; they rise by themselves very slowly from that initial "push" as the heat started moving out from the centre of the Earth.
The air on top of the Equator gets very hot, so it rises and moves, eventually ending up in the coldest places on Earth, the Poles. On its way, the air creates our "weather".
A very interesting planet we have for ours to study, if one chooses to do that.
If on the other hand, you don't have to luxury to study, but instead you live with animals all your life, then you get used to killing the animals to be able to survive. In the end you might get into the habit of killing other people too, if they get in your way. But then you would become a terrorist, such as those that killed over 130 people in Russia today!
The magma becomes attached to crust as the magma cools. The attached crust moves with the magma as the magma is moves by the convection currents. The convection currents in the magma moves the attached crust of the tectonic plates. Convection currents drive the movement of Earth's rigid tectonic plates in the planet's fluid molten mantle. In places where convection currents rise up towards the crust's surface, tectonic plates move away from each other in a process as seafloor spreading. Heat from Earth's interior causes currents of hot rising magma and cooler sinking magma to flow, moving the crust along with them. Convection currents occur in the mantle due to the heating of the Earth's interior. The two statements that describe events that help drive tectonic plate movement are convection currents cause hotter magma to rise and cooler magma to sink and subduction plates cause cooling at convergent boundaries. Diverging boundaries are where the convection currents move upwards. Converging boundaries are where convention current move downward. When a ocean plate meets a continental plate in a convergent boundary the mantle current carrying the ocean plate is forced downward. The energy for all that movement comes from sunlight that is absorbed and re-radiated by the surface of the Earth and the rotation of the Earth. Atmospheric circulation, along with ocean circulation, distributes heat across the entire surface of the Earth, bringing us our daily weather and shaping regional climates. The reason we have different weather patterns, jet streams, deserts and prevailing winds is all because of the global atmospheric circulation caused by the rotation of the Earth and the amount of heat different parts of the globe receive. Heating and cooling of the fluid, changes in the fluid's density, and the force of gravity combine to set convection currents in motion. Heat from the core and the mantle causes convection currents in the mantle. This is how the heat is transferred, and how the earth's plates are able to move.Heating and cooling of the fluid, changes in the fluid's density, and the force of gravity combine to set convection currents in motion. Heat from the core and the mantle causes convection currents in the mantle. This is how the heat is transferred, and how the earth's plates are able to move.
If tectonic activity is determined by convection currents it should be distributed at random around the earth's surface which is clearly not the case.
In my article 'The driving forces of tectonic activity' on RG I propose a new analysis based on the mechanical consequences of the tilt of the earth's axis.
