The links between marine plastic litter and the air-sea flux of greenhouse gases

Frontiers in Marine Science

Marine Science

Adrian H. Callaghan¹  Lonneke Goddijn-Murphy²  Jacek Piskozub³  David K. Woolf⁴  Christa A. Marandino⁵  Ryan Pereira⁶ 

[1] Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom;Environmental Research Institute, UHI North Highland, University of the Highlands and Islands, Thurso, United Kingdom;Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Sopot, Poland;International Centre for Island Technology, School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure, and Society, Heriot-Watt University, Stromness, United Kingdom;Marine Biogeochemistry Research Division, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany;The Lyell Centre, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom;

关键词: marine plastic litter;    greenhouse gasses;    air-sea gas transfer;    air-sea interaction;    carbon cycling;    climate change;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmars.2023.1180761

 received in 2023-03-06, accepted in 2023-06-27,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Climate change and plastic pollution are two of the most pressing environmental challenges caused by human activity, and they are directly and indirectly linked. We focus on the relationship between marine plastic litter and the air-sea flux of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Marine plastic litter has the potential to both enhance and reduce oceanic GHG fluxes, but this depends on many factors that are not well understood. Different kinds of plastic behave quite differently in the sea, affecting air-sea gas exchange in different, largely unknown, ways. The mechanisms of air-sea exchange of GHGs have been extensively studied and if air-sea gas transfer coefficients and concentrations of the gas in water and air are known, calculating the resulting GHG fluxes is reasonably straightforward. However, relatively little is known about the consequences of marine plastic litter for gas transfer coefficients, concentrations, and fluxes. Here we evaluate the most important aspects controlling the exchange of GHGs between the sea and the atmosphere and how marine plastic litter could change these. The aim is to move towards improving air-sea GHG flux calculations in the presence of plastic litter and we have largely limited ourselves to identifying processes, rather than estimating relative importance.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Goddijn-Murphy, Woolf, Pereira, Marandino, Callaghan and Piskozub