Earth's internal heat budget
Accounting of heat created within the Earth
Earth's internal heat budget
Earth's internal heat budget is fundamental to the thermal history of the Earth. The flow of heat from Earth's interior to the surface is estimated at 47±2 terawatts (TW) and comes from two main sources in roughly equal amounts: the radiogenic heat produced by the radioactive decay of isotopes in the mantle and crust, and the primordial heat left over from the formation of Earth. Earth's internal heat travels along geothermal gradients and powers most geological processes. It drives mantle convection, plate tectonics, mountain building, rock metamorphism, and volcanism. Convective heat transfer within the planet's high-temperature metallic core is also theorized to sustain a geodynamo which generates Earth's magnetic field. Despite its geological significance, Earth's interior heat contributes only 0.03% of Earth's total energy budget at the surface, which is dominated by 173,000 TW of incoming solar radiation. This external energy source powers most of the planet's atmospheric, oceanic...
Read on Wikipedia · Image J. H. Davies and D. R. Davies, CC BY 3.0
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