TY - JOUR
T1 - Inferring Earth’s discontinuous chemical layering from the 660-kilometer boundary topography
AU - Wu, Wenbo
AU - Ni, Sidao
AU - Irving, Jessica Claire Elizabeth
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions to improve the manuscript. W.W. is grateful to F. Simons for useful discussions. Funding: W.W. and S.N. were supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) through grant 2014CB845901. S.N. was supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences grant XDB18000000 and National Natural Science Foundation of China grant 41590854. S.N. was supported by Chinese Academy of Sciences grant XDB18000000. W.W. and S.N. were supported by National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) through grant 2014CB845901 and National Natural Science Foundation of China grant 41590854. W.W. and J.C.E.I. acknowledge support from NSF (EAR1644399 and 1736046) and the use of computing facilities provided by the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering.
Publisher Copyright:
2017 © The Authors. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2019/2/15
Y1 - 2019/2/15
N2 - Topography, or depth variation, of certain interfaces in the solid Earth can provide important insights into the dynamics of our planet interior. Although the intermediate- and long-range topographic variation of the 660-kilometer boundary between Earth’s upper and lower mantle is well studied, small-scale measurements are far more challenging. We found a surprising amount of topography at short length scale along the 660-kilometer boundary in certain regions using scattered P'P' seismic waves. Our observations required chemical layering in regions with high short-scale roughness. By contrast, we did not see such small-scale topography along the 410-kilometer boundary in the upper mantle. Our findings support the concept of partially blocked or imperfect circulation between the upper and lower mantle.
AB - Topography, or depth variation, of certain interfaces in the solid Earth can provide important insights into the dynamics of our planet interior. Although the intermediate- and long-range topographic variation of the 660-kilometer boundary between Earth’s upper and lower mantle is well studied, small-scale measurements are far more challenging. We found a surprising amount of topography at short length scale along the 660-kilometer boundary in certain regions using scattered P'P' seismic waves. Our observations required chemical layering in regions with high short-scale roughness. By contrast, we did not see such small-scale topography along the 410-kilometer boundary in the upper mantle. Our findings support the concept of partially blocked or imperfect circulation between the upper and lower mantle.
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U2 - 10.1126/science.aav0822
DO - 10.1126/science.aav0822
M3 - Article
C2 - 30765566
AN - SCOPUS:85061610048
SN - 0036-8075
VL - 363
SP - 736
EP - 740
JO - Science
JF - Science
IS - 6428
ER -