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Global drifter observations show ocean-surface pathways of wind-driven beaching
Summary
Scientists tracked ocean buoys to figure out where floating plastic debris is most likely to wash up on shore, finding that coastal wind patterns play a huge role — beaches facing onshore winds act like magnets for ocean trash. This matters because it helps identify "hotspot" coastlines most at risk for plastic pollution, which can guide cleanup efforts and improve predictions of where plastic (which breaks down into microplastics that can end up in our food and water) is likely to accumulate.
Abstract While millions of tons of plastic are predicted to enter the ocean each year from land, some of this plastic will wash back onshore. In this study we use observations from NOAA’s Global Drifter Program to study the pathways by which surface-floating material leaves the open ocean and beaches along coastlines. We analyze trajectories of undrogued drifters as a proxy for buoyant, macro-plastic debris and find that approximately 13.7\% of all undrogued drifters will beach within one year of losing their drogues. We find that beaching is spatially heterogeneous and concentrated in distinct coastal hotspots which are connected to large regions of the open ocean. By identifying coherent beaching watersheds, we show that a substantial portion of the ocean surface can produce beaching drifters. We further show that beaching probability depends strongly on climatological coastal winds. For example, drifters are more likely to beach purple at locations with a higher average onshore wind component, and beaching probability increases with the magnitude of this onshore wind component. These results, derived from undrogued drifter trajectories, provide insight into global beaching pathways and can be used to improve how beaching is parameterized in large-scale models of macro-plastic debris and other surface-ocean wind-exposed advecting material.