Fig. 3: Spatiotemporal relationship between dynamic topography and denudational cooling.
From: Deciphering mantle, tectonic and climatic drivers of exhumation
Central Asia, shown here at four key time periods (a), has remained above a long wavelength region of negative dynamic topography for the last 230 Ma. Reconstructions are shown in an orthographic projection centred on 73 °E, 37 °N. Changes in denudational cooling rates recorded by thermochronology data across Central Asia do not correlate with either dynamic topography amplitudes, which have remained negative since the Triassic (b), or changes in dynamic topography (c). Pearson correlation coefficients (r) between cooling rate and both dynamic topography (b) and change in dynamic topography (c) are 0.000 across the full dataset. Even at each individual million-year time step (d, e), r values have remained close to zero. An animation of Central Asian crustal cooling rates in relation to predicted dynamic topography and change in dynamic topography for the full 230 Ma modelling period can be found in the Supplementary Video S5.
