Plastic waste discharge to the global ocean constrained by seawater observations

Plastic waste discharge to the global ocean constrained by seawater observations

Zhang, Yanxu (Nanjing University)
Wu, Peipei (Nanjing University)
Xu, Ruochong (Nanjing University)
Wang, Xuantong (Nanjing University)
Lei, Lili (Nanjing University)
Schartup, Amina T. (University of California)
Peng, Yiming (Nanjing University)
Pang, Qiaotong (Nanjing University)
Luijendijk, Arjen (TU Delft Coastal Engineering; Deltares)

2023

Marine plastic pollution poses a potential threat to the ecosystem, but the sources and their magnitudes remain largely unclear. Existing bottom-up emission inventories vary among studies for two to three orders of magnitudes (OMs). Here, we adopt a top-down approach that uses observed dataset of sea surface plastic concentrations and an ensemble of ocean transport models to reduce the uncertainty of global plastic discharge. The optimal estimation of plastic emissions in this study varies about 1.5 OMs: 0.70 (0.13–3.8 as a 95% confidence interval) million metric tons yr⁻¹ at the present day. We find that the variability of surface plastic abundance caused by different emission inventories is higher than that caused by model parameters. We suggest that more accurate emission inventories, more data for the abundance in the seawater and other compartments, and more accurate model parameters are required to further reduce the uncertainty of our estimate.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:f004ee9f-575d-409e-8602-8aa32a97dd95

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37108-5

2041-1723

Nature Communications, 14 (1)

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2023 Yanxu Zhang, Peipei Wu, Ruochong Xu, Xuantong Wang, Lili Lei, Amina T. Schartup, Yiming Peng, Qiaotong Pang, Arjen Luijendijk, More Authors