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Weather 3000 Kilometers Below Earth's Surface More Varied Than Expected

Thursday, January 28, 2016 12:10

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The temperature 3,000 kilometers below the surface of the Earth is much more varied than previously thought, scientists have found.

The discovery of the regional variations in the lower mantle where it meets the core, which are up to three times greater than expected, will help scientists explain the structure of the Earth and how it formed.

Tomogram of the lowermost mantle (on top of core-mantle boundary, such as in our paper) centred on the equatorial region north of Australia. Green dots are stations and red dots are earthquakes near the Earth’s surface, the Earth’s mantle is transparent, and the ray paths through the interior are shown by solid lines. This image was made by our NCI Vizlab facility based on my data and the tomographic model of the lowermost mantle. You can see that the stations and earthquakes used in the tomographic inversion are not uniformly distributed across the surface. The blue regions are the regions of high velocity and the red regions show the low velocity.

Credit: ANU

“Where the mantle meets the core is a more dramatic boundary than the surface of the Earth,” said the lead researcher, Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkalčic, from The Australian National University (ANU).

“The contrast between the solid mantle and the liquid core is greater than the contrast between the ground and the air. The core is like a planet within a planet.” said Associate Professor Tkalčic, a geophysicist in the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences.

“The center of the earth is harder to study than the center of the sun.”

Temperatures in the lower mantle the reach around 3,000-3,500 degrees Celsius and the barometer reads about 125 gigapascals, about one and a quarter million times atmospheric pressure.

Tomogram of the lowermost mantle (on top of core-mantle boundary, such as in our paper) centred on the equatorial region north of Australia.

Credit: ANU

Variations in these temperatures and other material properties such as density and chemical composition affect the speed at which waves travel through the Earth.

The team examined more than 4,000 seismometers measurements of earthquakes from around the world.

In a process similar to a CT scan, the team then ran a complex mathematical process to unravel the data and build the most detailed global map of the lower mantle, showing features ranging from as large as the entire hemisphere down to 400 kilometers across.

The team used the TerraWulf high-end computing cluster to generate their map.

Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU

The map showed the seismic speeds varied more than expected over these distances and were probably driven by heat transfer across the core-mantle boundary and radioactivity.

“These images will help us understand how convection connects the Earth’s surface with the bottom of the mantle,” said Associate Professor Tkalčic.

“These thermal variations also have profound implications for the geodynamo in the core, which creates the Earth’s magnetic field.”

Contacts and sources:
Dr. Hrvoje Tkalcic

he Australian National University (ANU)

Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2016/01/weather-3000-kilometers-below-earths.html

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