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Atmospheric Microplastic Transport
Summary
This review examines atmospheric transport of microplastics, covering emission sources including roads and oceans, the meteorological and particle-characteristic factors influencing transport and deposition, and the cycles by which microplastics are redistributed to remote environments including high-altitude and polar regions.
The first part of this chapter discusses the phenomenon of microplastic transport, the cycles of which include roads, oceans, and remote areas. The factors affecting microplastic transport include the type, characteristics, and source of microplastic emitters, meteorological conditions, altitude, surface roughness, and microplastic deposition processes. Those will be discussed in the second part of this chapter. Microplastic transport modelling is entirely new, but it will help the study of the dynamics of microplastic transport in the future. Therefore, the Eulerian and Lagrangian principles are the basis for the modelling. The application of basic models such as the back-trajectory transport model for remote areas, the Lagrangian model for the dispersion of microplastics on roads, and the advantages and disadvantages of each model will be discussed in the third part of this chapter.
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