Increased density of large low-velocity provinces recovered by seismologically constrained gravity inversion

Szwillus, Wolfgang; Ebbing, Jörg; Steinberger, Bernhard

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-1551-2020

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-1551-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-1551-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

Research article

|

26 Aug 2020

Research article |

| 26 Aug 2020

Increased density of large low-velocity provinces recovered by seismologically constrained gravity inversion

Wolfgang Szwillus, Jörg Ebbing, and Bernhard Steinberger

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-11-1551-2020-supplement

Data sets

SubMachine: Web-Based Tools for Exploring Seismic Tomography and Other Models of Earth's Deep Interior (http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~smachine) K. Hosseini, K. J. Matthews, K. Sigloch, G. E. Shephard, M. Domeier, and M. Tsekhmistrenko https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GC007431

Model code and software

PerpleX J. A. D. Connolly http://www.perplex.ethz.ch/

Mineos G. Masters, J. H. Woodhouse and G. Freeman https://geodynamics.org/cig/software/mineos/

llvp-density W. Szwillus https://github.com/wokos/llvp-density

Short summary

At the bottom of the mantle (2850 km depth) two large volumes of reduced seismic velocity exist underneath Africa and the Pacific. Their reduced velocity can be explained by an increased temperature or a different chemical composition. We use the gravity field to determine the density distribution inside the Earth's mantle and find that it favors a distinct chemical composition over a purely thermal cause.