How the Philippines contributes to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Abstract

This study investigates the behavior of parcels advected by the horizontal surface currents of the ocean using the dataset from the European Copernicus Marine Service (CMS) with a 1/12° horizontal resolution on a longitude/latitude equirectangular projection. In this study, parcels are treated as prototypes of floating plastic debris. We used a Lagrangian Ocean Analysis toolbox the OceanParcels and ran a set of single-year and five-year simulations forced by the CMS hydrodynamic data, time stepped at a fourth-order Runge-Kutta scheme. Using the toolbox, virtual particles were placed at 15°−15.3° North and 118.7°−119.0° East on the western and 15°−15.3° North and 121.5°−121.8° East on the eastern coast of the Philippines, in Santo Tomas River Delta and Dingalan Bay, respectively. The maximum distance traveled by the parcels was computed using the Euclidean method. Parcels released in the west traveled 10⁴ km for both simulations. Parcels in the east traveled 10³ km for a year and traveled 10⁴ km for five years.