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Constraining The Atmospheric Limb Of The Plastic Cycle, Janice Brahney, Natalie Mahowald, Marje Prank, Gavin Cornwell, Zbigniew Kilmont, Hitoshi Matsui, Kimberly Ann Prather
Constraining The Atmospheric Limb Of The Plastic Cycle, Janice Brahney, Natalie Mahowald, Marje Prank, Gavin Cornwell, Zbigniew Kilmont, Hitoshi Matsui, Kimberly Ann Prather
Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications
Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental and social issues of the 21st century. Recent work has highlighted the atmosphere’s role in transporting microplastics to remote locations [S. Allen et al., Nat. Geosci. 12, 339 (2019) and J. Brahney, M. Hallerud, E. Heim, M. Hahnenberger, S. Sukumaran, Science 368, 1257–1260 (2020)]. Here, we use in situ observations of microplastic deposition combined with an atmospheric transport model and optimal estimation techniques to test hypotheses of the most likely sources of atmospheric plastic. Results suggest that atmospheric microplastics in the western United States are primarily derived from secondary re-emission …