When the hot plumes reach the surface, they may create strings of oceanic islands.

Since the seafloor may be drifting gradually over the hot plume, the bubbles' successive arrivals may be marked by a chain of islands.

When the hot plume arrives at the base of the lithosphere, some of the lighter rock of the lithosphere rapidly melts.

Yet they were able to trace the hot plumes under Hawaii, the Azores and Iceland to depths greater than 100 miles.

Second, the analyte molecules are ionized (more accurately protonated or deprotonated) in the hot plume.

Those, most geologists believe, are created by hot plumes of rock rising from the core, melting the underside of the earth's crust.

Two black cylinders on hot plumes of fire broke through the clouds.

This is unexpected for the classic model of a hot, buoyant plume in the mantle.

In addition to direct warming of the surface, he proposed that hot plumes might alter deep currents to affect surface temperatures.

But that analysis, if correct, poses serious questions for plate tectonics because hot plumes and cold crustal plates have long been assumed to move independently of each other.