Yang et al. (2025): Deep carbon sink in the East Asian mantle and its impact on atmospheric CO₂ drawdown since the Cretaceous
Chun Yang, Sheng-Ao Liu, Hong-Yan Li, Yi-Gang Xu, IN: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2025.119541
The western Pacific oceanic slab has been deeply subducted into the mantle beneath East Asia since the early Cretaceous, eventually stagnating within the mantle transition zone (410–660 km). Here the authors present the first quantitative estimate of the flux of deeply subducted carbon beneath East Asia related to the Pacific slab and evaluate its impact on atmospheric CO₂ levels (pCO₂) since the Cretaceous. They compiled chemical and zinc isotopic data for the widely distributed East Asian intercontinental basalts (EAIBs; N = 399), which originated from partial melting of the upper mantle above the stagnated western Pacific slab. By using a melt CO₂ degassing correction and a “melting-mixing” model, they show that the formation of EAIBs involved ubiquitous magma mixing between silicate melts and carbon-rich melts.