The Indian Ocean Geoid Low is an enigmatic phenomenon in geodynamics. Many brain-storming hypotheses have been proposed in the last few decades to explain this geoid low. One popular idea argues that the high density lower mantle slabs contribute to this geoid low. Recent discoveries have shown that low-density anomalies from the African LLSVP region could have a more substantial influence on crea ...[Read More]
Observing the Earth’s changing surface is the only thing solid Earth scientists can do; we simply cannot drill deep enough into the Earth and look at the processes that occur at very high temperatures and pressures. We must combine surface measurements from various disciplines to infer that specific surface imprints are caused by specific processes at depth. The sinking of oceanic plates into the ...[Read More]
Deccan volcanism is one of the landmark events in India’s geodynamical history. Yet, its origin is still under debate regarding its association with the Réunion plume. In this week’s news and views, Ayanangshu Das, a PhD student at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, explains their recent study to understand the emplacement mechanism by observing the magm ...[Read More]
Accretionary prisms are wedge-shaped bodies of crustal rocks that are commonly known to have formed by accommodating the component of convergence along subduction margins. These prisms, primarily wedge shaped with lateral variations in topographic height from hinterland to foreland are commonly characterised by a gentle and uniform slope towards the frontal margin (for instance, the Himalayan fold ...[Read More]
Stellar storms modify the atmospheric evolution of planets. ‘Hot Jupiter’ planets being very close to their host star, are often affected by such storms. In this week’s peculiar planet, Gopal Hazra, a post-doctoral fellow at the School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, discusses effect of stellar storms on those planets using his self-consistent hydrodynamic models of planetary ...[Read More]
Simplified models or toy models explain the complex Earth processes fairly well, even though they are far from reality. In this week’s Geodynamics 101, Adam Beall, Research Associate at Cardiff University, discusses some of his favourite geophysical toy models! I remember being excited to first hear about scientists doing Earth modelling and imagined impressive computer visualisations of tec ...[Read More]
Generation and reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field have remained one of the most controversial topics. In this week’s geodynamics 101, Debarshi Majumder, a PhD student from the Indian Institute of Science, gives a brief overview of the theory of geodynamo reversal and discusses some of the preliminary results obtained from numerical modelling. A planetary magnetic reversal is one of ...[Read More]
Due to huge difference between the time scale of the mantle convection and the outer core convection, they are modelled separately. In this week’s News and Views, Masaki Yoshida from the Volcanoes and Earth’s Interior Research Center, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Japan, put forward the recent development on the modeling of the whole solid-Earth. The E ...[Read More]
A complete fluid dynamical approach of modeling the Earth’s deformation can not provide a complete picture due to presence of rigid lithospheric plates. In this week’s news and views, Srishti Singh, scientist at National Geophysical Research Institute, India, explains how coupled models of lithosphere dynamics and mantle convection are developed. The ongoing collision of the Indian plate wi ...[Read More]
Flow against gravity is a common feature in the geodynamic phenomenon. In this week’s Geodynamics 101, Dip Ghosh from Jadavpur University Geodynamics Lab will explain the fundamentals of Rayleigh-Taylor instability: A key to understanding the anti-gravity flow. It has long been realized that most of the geodynamic processes can be described in terms of slow viscous flow. Thus, like many othe ...[Read More]