Giant Ocean Found Deep Below Earth's Surface, Solution to the Water Crisis?
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- The impacts of climate change are starting to be felt with many countries experiencing severe water crises, causing around 4 billion people to experience water scarcity for at least one month every year. Efforts are needed to find more water sources that can save lives.
Researchers from Northwestern University, Illinois, United States (US), may have a solution to this problem by discovering a giant water reservoir that is three times the size of the combined oceans on Earth. This region is located at a depth of 700 km below the Earth's surface in a rock known as ringwoodite.
This finding was first published in Science magazine in 2014 with the title 'Dehydrationmelting at the top of the lower mantle'. This research also explains the unique properties of ringwoodite.
Researchers are of the view that a hidden ocean beneath the surface, hidden within a blue rock known as ringwoodite, may be the primary source of water on Earth's surface. The size of this underground ocean is three times the combined volume of all the oceans on Earth's surface.
"This is strong evidence that water on Earth comes from within," said Steven Jacobsen, a researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois and lead author of the study, quoted in Science.
"Ringwoodite is like a sponge, absorbing water. There is something very special about the crystal structure of ringwoodite that allows it to attract hydrogen and trap water," the geophysicist said in his research paper.
"I think we are finally seeing evidence of a water cycle throughout Earth, which may help explain the abundance of liquid water on the surface of habitable planets. Scientists have been searching for this missing deep water for decades," he said further.
To uncover this underground ocean, researchers used 2,000 seismographs across the US, analyzing seismic waves from more than 500 Earthquakes. Waves traveling through the Earth's inner layers, including its core, slow down when passing through wet rock, so scientists can assume the presence of these huge water deposits.
"The high mineral water storage capacity in the Earth's mantle transition zone (410 to 660 kilometers deep) implies the possible existence of deep H2O reservoirs, which could lead to dehydration and melting of the vertically flowing mantle. We examine the downwelling impacts of the transition. zone to the lower mantle with high-pressure laboratory experiments, numerical modeling, and seismic P-to-S conversion," the scientists said.
"These results suggest hydration in most regions of the transition zone and that dehydration melt may play a role in trapping H2O in the transition zone," the researchers said.