Age, spreading rates, and spreading asymmetry of the world's ocean crust

Description

The authors present four companion digital models of the age, age uncertainty, spreading rates and spreading asymmetries of the world's ocean basins as geographic and Mercator grids with 2 minute resolution. The grids include data from all the major ocean basins as well as detailed reconstructions of back-arc basins. The age, spreading rate and asymmetry at each grid node is determined by linear interpolation between adjacent seafloor isochrons in the direction of spreading. Ages for ocean floor between the oldest identified magnetic anomalies and continental crust are interpolated by geological estimates of the ages of passive continental margin segments. The age uncertainties for grid cells coinciding with marine magnetic anomaly identifications, observed or rotated to their conjugate ridge flanks, are based on the difference between gridded age and observed age. The uncertainties are also a function of the distance of a given grid cell to the nearest age observation, and the proximity to fracture zones or other age discontinuities. Asymmetries in crustal accretion appear to be frequently related to asthenospheric flow from mantle plumes to spreading ridges, resulting in ridge jumps towards hotspots. The authors also use the new age grid to compute global residual basement depth grids from the difference between observed oceanic basement depth and predicted depth using two alternative age-depth relationships. The new set of grids helps to investigate prominent negative depth anomalies, which may be alternatively related to subducted slab material descending in the mantle or to asthenospheric flow. A combination of these digital grids and the associated relative and absolute plate motion model with seismic tomography and mantle convection model outputs represent a valuable set of tools to investigate geodynamic problems.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
0 The SeaDataNet Vocabulary Server is populated with lists describing a wide range of entities relevant to marine metadata and data such as parameters, sea area names, platform classes, instrument types, and so on. http://www.seadatanet.org/Standards-Software/Common-Vocabularies
21 NGDC Web page of information about the data set with links to download data and documentation from NCEI. https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/ocean_age/ocean_age_2008.html
21 Alternate download from the originator. http://www.earthbyte.org/Resources/agegrid2008.html
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 The information provided on this page seeks to define how the GCMD Keywords are structured, used and accessed. It also provides information on how users can participate in the further development of the keywords. https://earthdata.nasa.gov/about/gcmd/global-change-master-directory-gcmd-keywords
0 https://data.noaa.gov/waf/NOAA/NESDIS/NGDC/MGG/Geology/iso/
0 Information for contacts at NCEI. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/contact
0 The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are part of a Linked Data Service, actively maintained since 1898 to catalog materials held at the Library of Congress. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects

Tags

  • ships
  • vertical location
  • scientific archives
  • ocean bottom
  • age determinations
  • nesdis
  • marine geology
  • oceans
  • marine geophysics
  • national geophysical data center
  • noaa
  • global ocean
  • in situ ocean-based platforms
  • oceanography
  • geology
  • rocks/minerals/crystals
  • u.s. department of commerce
  • earth science
  • geographic region
  • doc/noaa/nesdis/ngdc
  • solid earth
  • paleomagnetism
  • doc/noaa/nesdis/ncei
  • marine magnetics
  • sea floor
  • submarine geology
  • unknown
  • geomagnetism
  • electronic records
  • crust
  • national centers for environmental information

Topics

Categories