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Geophysics

Taking the Earth's temperature

Nature volume 406, pages 470–471 (2000)Cite this article

The slow overturning of the Earth's interior, which we see on the surface in the motions of the tectonic plates, is driven by differences in temperature and composition of the interior. Direct measurements of temperatures in mines and boreholes (to a maximum depth of about 10 km) sample only the upper crust. Some information about temperatures at greater depths (to 200 km) in the upper mantle is provided by the analysis of minerals from rock fragments carried to the surface by volcanic magmas. But much of our knowledge of the structure of the Earth's interior and, indirectly, its composition and temperature, comes from seismology — the study of seismic waves produced by earthquakes. Much of the variation in seismic wave speeds in the mantle is probably due to variations in temperature, but attempts to model these variations have been few and far between. Now, however, better seismic models and experimental data on the physical properties of mantle rocks make such analysis both feasible and rewarding. The state of the art in the interpretation of seismic tomography is described in a paper by Goes et al.1 in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Seismic tomography is loosely analogous with the more familiar ‘CAT scan’ of medical testing. In the CAT scan, the subject is uniformly illuminated with X-rays that travel along simple straight-line paths to an array of closely spaced detectors. An image of the internal structure responsible for greater or lesser absorption along particular paths is created from the detector outputs. Unlike X-rays, seismic rays are strongly bent (refracted) by variations in wave speed — so they travel from an earthquake source back to the Earth's surface along curved paths. Des- pite this added complication and the non-uniform distribution of earthquake sources and receivers, geophysicists have obtained reliable three-dimensional images of the Earth's interior on regional and global scales.

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Figure 1: The effects of temperature on S-wave speed and dissipation of strain energy (after ref. 13).

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  1. Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    Ian Jackson

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Jackson, I. Taking the Earth's temperature. Nature 406, 470–471 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35020182

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