0000000000535485
AUTHOR
David R. Hilton
Forearc carbon sink reduces long-term volatile recycling into the mantle
Carbon and other volatiles in the form of gases, fluids or mineral phases are transported from Earth's surface into the mantle at convergent margins, where the oceanic crust subducts beneath the continental crust. The efficiency of this transfer has profound implications for the nature and scale of geochemical heterogeneities in Earth's deep mantle and shallow crustal reservoirs, as well as Earth's oxidation state. However, the proportions of volatiles released from the forearc and backarc are not well constrained compared to fluxes from the volcanic arc front. Here we use helium and carbon isotope data from deeply sourced springs along two cross-arc transects to show that about 91 per cent…
Sources, degassing, and contamination of CO2, H2O, He, Ne, and Ar in basaltic glasses from Kolbeinsey Ridge, North Atlantic
Abstract New volatile data (CO2, H2O, He, Ne, and Ar) are presented for 24 submarine basaltic glasses from the Kolbeinsey Ridge, Tjornes Fracture Zone and Mohns Ridge, North Atlantic. Low CO2 and He contents indicate that magmas were strongly outgassed with the extent of degassing increasing toward the south, as expected from shallower ridge depths. Ne and Ar are significantly more abundant in the southernmost glasses than predicted for degassed melt. The strong atmospheric isotopic signal associated with this excess Ne and Ar suggests syn- or posteruptive contamination by air. Degassing, by itself, cannot generate the large variations in δ13C values of dissolved CO2 or coupled CO2-Ar varia…