Distribution of plastics of various sizes and densities in the global ocean from a 3D Eulerian model

TL;DR

This study introduces a 3D Eulerian model that simulates the transport and distribution of microplastics in the global ocean, considering particle size and density effects on vertical movement, and compares results with satellite data.

Contribution

The model uniquely incorporates particle size and density to predict microplastic distribution and seasonal variations in the ocean, validated against satellite observations.

Findings

Low-density, sufficiently large particles aggregate in subtropical gyres.

Small particles penetrate deeper into the ocean, up to 1 km.

Seasonal surface concentration variations correlate with mixing layer depth.

Abstract

We develop a 3D Eulerian model to study the transport and distribution of microplastics in the global ocean. Among other benefits that will be discussed in the paper, one unique feature of our model is that it takes into consideration the effect of properties of particles (size and density, the former for the first time) to their vertical terminal velocity. With ocean current velocity taken from ECCOv4r4, a dataset generated from a data-assimilated MITgcm reanalysis, our model is integrated for 26 years for particles of different properties with their stationary patterns studied. We find that only low-density particles with sufficient size (e.g. density $900kg/m^3$ with size $\gtrsim 10 \mu m$) aggregate in the five subtropical gyres observed in previous studies. In contrast, particles of smaller size ($\sim 1 \mu m$), irrespective of their density, behave like neutrally buoyant particles with a weaker pattern on the surface and a deeper penetration into depth (up to about 1km deep). In addition, we observe seasonal variations of floating particle concentration on the ocean surface, which reasonably agree with the satellite observation by Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) in terms of the phase of the variation. We find that the seasonal variation of the surface particle concentration correlates well with the variation of the mixing layer (ML) depth globally, due to an almost uniform vertical distribution of particles in the ML with total amount of particles conserved.