Fig. 4: Spatiotemporal variation of lunar mantle water abundance estimates. | Nature

Fig. 4: Spatiotemporal variation of lunar mantle water abundance estimates.

From: Water abundance in the lunar farside mantle

Fig. 4

The water abundance in the mantle source of CE6 mare basalt is estimated to be 1–1.5 µg g−1, plotting within the lowest end of the ranges from nearside samples. It is thus apparent that the lunar mantle may exhibit a hemispheric dichotomy in terms of water contents. The mantle water abundances estimated from Apollo and CE5 lunar samples with definite (non-ejecta) geographic locations are plotted for comparison9,33. All data are plotted as average values with the error bars representing the ranges ((max − min)/2) of the estimates (Supplementary Table 7). The approximately 2.8 Ga age of the CE6 mare basalt is provided in Zhang, Q. W. L. et al. (manuscript in preparation). Note the vertical axis is the log scale. Red (1.25 µg g−1), light blue (7.5 µg g−1) and orange (70.3 µg g−1) lines are the median H2O abundances for the mantle sources estimated on the melt inclusions from the farside CE6 mare basalt, all nearside mare basalts and the nearside pyroclastic glasses.

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