The American Geophysical Union selects a small number of key papers from the thousands published each month in AGU journals to highlight. For July, 2012, the AGU has selected a paper written by DIAS scientists.

The paper is published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems and is written on a new model to estimate water in the Earth’s mantle. The work, by Senior Professor Alan G. Jones with Schroedinger Fellow Mark Muller and Post-Doctoral Fellow Javier Fullea, of the School of Cosmic Physics, together with a U.S. colleague Dr Rob Evans at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, examines current models based on laboratory studies for water within nominally anhydrous mantle rocks, and shows them all to be inconsistent with geophysical and petrological observations. A new model is proposed that is consistent with the field observations. The work underpinning the paper was part of the Southern African MagnetoTelluric EXperiment (SAMTEX) and was funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the South African Department of Science and Technology, as well as industry sponsors.

More information on the paper can be found at: http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/highlights/highlights.cgi?action=show&doi=10.1029/2012GC004055&jc=gc

The paper is available from Friday 13 July on the AGU Press page under Journal Highlights: http://www.agu.org/news/press/

A larger image of the graphic below can be viewed here