https://phys.org/news/2019-08-arctic-sea-ice-microplastics.html
[Methane GWP numbers higher than 30 have to become part of the
conversation. We don't have a 100 years to solve the GHG emissions
issue. The IPCC says we have less than 12. So let's use numbers that
make sense. 86 is the methane GWP over 20 years (GWP20). But more
reasonably, we should be using GWP10, and for methane, that number is
130
(http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/potential-impact-of-large-abrupt-meane.html).
GWP100 of 34 is an irrelevant statistic now. Use GWP10 of 130 for
your climate change conversations.
images in online article]
August 16, 2019
Arctic sea ice loaded with microplastics
by Marlowe Hood
At first glance, it looks like hard candy laced with flecks of fake
fruit, or a third grader's art project confected from recycled debris.
In reality, it's a sliver of Arctic Ocean sea ice riddled with
microplastics, extracted by scientists from deep inside an ice block
that likely drifted southward past Greenland into Canada's increasingly
navigable Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
"We didn't expect this amount of plastic, we were shocked," said
University of Rhode Island ice expert Alessandra D'Angelo, one of a
dozen scientists collecting and analysing data during an 18-day
expedition aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden.
"There is so much of it, and of every kind—beads, filaments, nylons,"
she told AFP from Greenland, days after completing the voyage.
Plastic pollution was not a primary focus of the Northwest Passage
Project, funded by the US National Science Foundation and Heising-Simons
Foundation.
Led by oceanographer Brice Loose, the multi-year mission is
investigating how global warming might transform the biochemistry and
ecosystems of the expansive Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
'Punch to the stomach'
One key question is whether the receding ice pack and influx of fresh
water will boost the release into the atmosphere of methane, a
greenhouse gas 30 times more potent that CO2.
The Arctic region has warmed twice as quickly as the global average,
some two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Average Arctic sea ice extent set a record low for July, nearly 20
percent below the 1981-2010 average, the US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported on Thursday.
But plastics has inserted itself onto the research agenda all the same.
"The ubiquity of plastic, for us it was kind of a punch to the stomach,"
Loose said.
"Just to see what looked like a normal ice core in such a pristine
environment chock full of this completely foreign material."
A study published Thursday in Science Advances concluded that a large
quantity of microplastic fragments and fibres are transported by winds
into the Arctic region, and then hitch a ride Earthward in snowflakes.
At the same time, several million tonnes of plastics find their way each
year directly into oceans, where waves and the Sun break them down into
microscopic bits over time.
'Acts like a sieve'
For the samples collected by Loose's team—near the hamlet of
Resolute—the low salinity and thickness of the ice left no doubt that it
was more than a year old, and had originated in the northern Arctic Ocean.
The concentration of plastic bits in the ice was far higher than in
surrounding water.
"As water freezes it forms crystals," explained Jacob Strock, another
member of the team from the University of Rhode Island.
"Water passes through these crystals as they form," he told AFP. "The
ice acts like a sieve, filtering out particles in the water."
Tiny plants and animals, called plankton, also get trapped in the ice.
Some plankton ingest the plastic bits, which then work their way up the
ocean food chain.
Plastic particles have recently been found inside fish in the deepest
recesses of the ocean, called the Mariana Trench, and blanketing the
most pristine snows in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain.
In the last two decades, the world has produced as much plastic as
during the rest of history, and the industry is set to grow by four
percent a year until 2025, according to a recent report by Grand View
Research.
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