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| View from MARS, by Robert Zierenberg. View from the Mid Atlantic Ridge spreading center where it come ashore on the Reykjanes Peninsula. |
Because the mantle’s temperature cannot be measured directly, scientists have devised a number of creative methods to derive this information, but these have produced widely varying results. Now Matthews et al. offer new constraints on this parameter beneath Iceland, one of the few places on Earth where a divergent plate boundary is subaerially exposed because of an anomalously large amount of melting occurring beneath the island.
The temperature of the Icelandic mantle from olivine-spinel aluminum exchange thermometry, by S. Matthews, O. Shorttle, J. Maclennan.
(Thanks to GRC Member Marcelo Lippmann, Staff Scientist (retired) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the submission.)