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Measurement of Near-Surface Current Shear Using a Lagrangian Platform and Its Implication on Microplastic Dispersion
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A new Lagrangian ocean platform equipped with an upward-facing sonar measured current shear within the top 2 meters of the sea surface, finding elevated velocity gradients that strongly influence how lightweight particles like microplastics disperse. The findings help explain why surface MP concentrations are so patchy and provide better data for models predicting where plastics accumulate.
Air–sea interactions within the ocean’s near-surface layer play a pivotal role in climate regulation and are essential for understanding the dispersion of marine pollutants such as microplastics and oil slicks. Despite its significance, high-resolution data exploring the physical dynamics near the air–sea interface are noticeably sparse. To address this, we introduced a novel Lagrangian observational platform, outfitted with an upward-facing high-resolution ADCP, designed to measure current shear within the top 2 m of the surface water. Through two short field experiments, we identified enhanced currents and shear in the near-surface layer, and observed a negative vertical momentum flux aligned with the wind direction and a positive one orthogonal to it. The measurement suggest that Stokes drift contributes to 10% of horizontal mass transport and 20% of shear in the top surface layer, with the direct and local wind-driven current being the predominant influence. To accurately model the physical behavior of buoyant microplastics, this observation underscores the necessity of parameterizations that account for both the Stokes drift and the direct, local wind-driven current, a factor that is often overlooked in many models.
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