Plate data: Bird (2003), PB2002, converted by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil (ODC-By 1.0). Land: Natural Earth (India POV).
The Arabian Plate carries the Arabian Peninsula. USGS describes how spreading in East Africa has torn Saudi Arabia away from the rest of Africa, forming the Red Sea. The African and Arabian Plates meet at a triple junction where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden.
In PB2002, its boundaries with the African and Somali Plates are mostly divergent, where the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden open. Its boundary with the Eurasian Plate is mostly convergent.1
USGS points to the Afar Triangle as a triple junction where three plates pull away from one another: the Arabian Plate and the two parts of the African Plate, the Nubian and the Somalian, which are splitting along the East African Rift Zone (USGS). If spreading continues, geologists expect the three plates to separate completely, letting the Indian Ocean flood the area.
The push of Arabia into Eurasia shapes the land to its northwest. Bird (2003) recounts how McKenzie (1972) proposed that Anatolia is extruded westward to escape the collision of Arabia with Eurasia. When GPS became available, testing that idea was a high priority, and the predicted westward motion and counterclockwise rotation of Anatolia were quickly apparent. A summary of 10 years of GPS results from 189 stations by McClusky and others (2000) defined two separate regions of low strain, which PB2002 draws as the Anatolia and Aegean Sea Plates. Their northern and eastern edges follow the North Anatolian and East Anatolian faults.
Bird does not divide the Alps-Persia-Tibet mountain belt into plates. He marks it as an orogen, a zone where the plate model is not expected to be accurate. In the east, he takes the shape of the triple junction where the Arabian, Somali and Indian Plates meet from a 2001 study by Fournier and others (Bird 2003).
Arabian Plate in numbers
Measured from its PB2002 outline, the Arabian Plate covers about 4.9 million km², or 1% of the
Earth's surface. That makes it number 14 by area of the 52 plates in the model.
It spans from 12°N to 39°N and from 34°E to 65°E.
Its edge is about 10,644 km long, mostly convergent:
34.2%divergentDivergent boundary. Plates pull away from each other and new crust forms between them. Source (3,644 km)
, 39.6%convergentConvergent boundary. Plates move toward each other and crust is destroyed as one plate dives under another. Source (4,215 km)
and 26.2%transformTransform boundary. Plates slide horizontally past each other. Crust is neither made nor destroyed. Source (2,785 km)
.
Countries whose main landmass sits on this plate: Djibouti, Eritrea, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Countries that straddle a boundary
are listed under the plate that holds the center of their largest landmass.
Along its boundaries it moves a mean 2.1 cm/yr relative to its neighbors, fastest against the Eurasian Plate. Bird (2003)
Neighboring plates Neighbors. Plates that share a boundary with this plate. Most plate movement happens along these narrow zones between plates. Source
The Arabian Plate shares a boundary with 5 plates in PB2002, longest shared edge first.
The longest, about 3,331 km, is with the Eurasian Plate; the shortest, about 574 km, is with the Anatolia Plate.
