There’s as much water in Earth’s mantle as in all the oceans

The deep Earth holds about the same amount of water as our oceans. That’s the conclusion from experiments on rocks typical of those in the mantle transition zone, a global buffer layer 410 to 660 kilometres beneath us that separates the upper from the lower mantle. “If our estimation is correct, it means there’s a large amount of water in the deep Earth,” says Fei Hongzhan at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. “The total

There’s as much water in Earth’s mantle as in all the oceans

The deep Earth holds about the same amount of water as our oceans. That’s the conclusion from experiments on rocks typical of those in the mantle transition zone, a global buffer layer 410 to 660 kilometres beneath us that separates the upper from the lower mantle. “If our estimation is correct, it means there’s a large amount of water in the deep Earth,” says Fei Hongzhan at the University of Bayreuth in Germany. “The total