Low viscosity of the bottom of the Earth’s mantle inferred from the analysis of Chandler wobble and tidal deformation

0031-9201/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. A doi:10.1016/j.pepi.2011.10.001 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 92 642 2515; fax E-mail addresses: [email protected] [email protected] (S.-i. Karato). Viscosity of the D00 layer of the Earth’s mantle, the lowermost layer in the Earth’s mantle, controls a number of geodynamic processes, but a robust estimate of its viscosity has been hampered by the lack of relevant observations. A commonly used analysis of geophysical signals in terms of heterogeneity in seismic wave velocities suffers from major uncertainties in the velocity-to-density conversion factor, and the glacial rebound observations have little sensitivity to the D00 layer viscosity. We show that the decay of Chandler wobble and semi-diurnal to 18.6 years tidal deformation combined with the constraints from the postglacial isostatic adjustment observations suggest that the effective viscosity in the bottom 300 km layer is 10–10 Pa s, and also the effective viscosity of the bottom part of the D00 layer ( 100 km thickness) is less than 10 Pa s. Such a viscosity structure of the D00 layer would be a natural consequence of a steep temperature gradient in the D00 layer, and will facilitate small scale convection and melt segregation in the D00 layer. 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.