Effects of basal drag on subduction dynamics from 2D numerical models

Suchoy, Lior; Goes, Saskia; Maunder, Benjamin; Garel, Fanny; Davies, Rhodri

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-79-2021

Articles | Volume 12, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-79-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-79-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 1

Research article

|

20 Jan 2021

Research article |

| 20 Jan 2021

Effects of basal drag on subduction dynamics from 2D numerical models

Lior Suchoy, Saskia Goes, Benjamin Maunder, Fanny Garel, and Rhodri Davies

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-79-2021-supplement

Data sets

Initiation files for Fluidity numerical modelling code, used in the paper Suchoy et al., 2020 Lior Suchoy and Saskia Goes https://doi.org/10.5285/b3a75382-31db-428c-90bb-458fdf66d77a

Initiation files for Fluidity numerical modelling code, used in the paper Suchoy et al., 2020 L. Suchoy and S. Goes https://doi.org/10.5285/b3a75382-31db-428c-90bb-458fdf66d77a

Short summary

We use 2D numerical models to highlight the role of basal drag in subduction force balance. We show that basal drag can significantly affect velocities and evolution in our simulations and suggest an explanation as to why there are no trends in plate velocities with age in the Cenozoic subduction record (which we extracted from recent reconstruction using GPlates). The insights into the role of basal drag will help set up global models of plate dynamics or specific regional subduction models.