Earth's climate, mantle, and core interact over geologic timescales. Climateinfluences whether plate tectonics can take place on a planet, with coolclimates being favorable for plate tectonics because they enhance stresses inthe lithosphere, suppress plate boundary annealing, and promote hydration andweakening of the lithosphere. Plate tectonics plays a vital role in thelong-term carbon cycle, which helps to maintain a temperate climate. Platetectonics provides long-term cooling of the core, which is vital for generatinga magnetic field, and the magnetic field is capable of shielding atmosphericvolatiles from the solar wind. Coupling between climate, mantle, and core canpotentially explain the divergent evolution of Earth and Venus. As Venus liestoo close to the sun for liquid water to exist, there is no long-term carboncycle and thus an extremely hot climate. Therefore plate tectonics cannotoperate and a long-lived core dynamo cannot be sustained due to insufficientcore cooling. On planets within the habitable zone where liquid water ispossible, a wide range of evolutionary scenarios can take place depending oninitial atmospheric composition, bulk volatile content, or the timing of whenplate tectonics initiates, among other factors. Many of these evolutionarytrajectories would render the planet uninhabitable. However, there is stillsignificant uncertainty over the nature of the coupling between climate,mantle, and core. Future work is needed to constrain potential evolutionaryscenarios and the likelihood of an Earth-like evolution.
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