Carbon solubility in olivine and the mode of carbon storage in the Earth's mantle

Hans Keppler (), Michael Wiedenbeck and Svyatoslav S. Shcheka
Additional contact information
Hans Keppler: Universität Tübingen
Michael Wiedenbeck: GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam
Svyatoslav S. Shcheka: Universität Tübingen

Nature, 2003, vol. 424, issue 6947, 414-416

Abstract: Abstract The total amount of carbon in the atmosphere, oceans and other near-surface reservoirs is thought to be negligible compared to that stored in the Earth's mantle1,2,3. Although the mode of carbon storage in the mantle is largely unknown, observations of microbubbles on dislocations in minerals from mantle xenoliths has led to the suggestion that carbon may be soluble in silicates at high pressure4,5. Here we report measurements of carbon solubility in olivine, the major constituent of the upper mantle, at pressures up to 3.5 GPa. We have found that, contrary to previous expectations, carbon solubility in olivine is exceedingly low—of the order of 0.1 to 1 parts per million by weight. Together with similar data for pyroxenes, garnet and spinel, we interpret this to imply that most carbon must be present as a separate phase in the deeper parts of the upper mantle, probably as a carbonate phase6,7. Large-scale volcanic eruptions tapping such a carbonate-bearing mantle reservoir might therefore rapidly transfer large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, consistent with models that link global mass extinctions to flood basalt eruptions via a sudden increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels8,9,10,11.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01828 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:424:y:2003:i:6947:d:10.1038_nature01828

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature01828

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().