Hurricane Larry Dropped Over 100,000 Microplastics Per Square Meter Per Day, Study Finds

When hurricane Larry made landfall in the Atlantic in 2021, it was depositing over 100,000 microplastics per square meter of land per day. The findings have been published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment. Wired reports: As hurricane Larry curved north in the Atlantic in 2021, sparing the eastern seaboard of the United States, a special instrument was waiting for it on the coast of Newfoundland. Because hurricanes feed on warm ocean water, scientists wondered whether such a storm could pick up microplastics from the sea surface and deposit them when it made landfall. Larry was literally a perfect storm: Because it hadn't touched land before reaching the island, anything it dropped would have been scavenged from the water or air, as opposed to, say, a highly populated city, where you'd expect to find lots of microplastics.

The instrument in a clearing on Newfoundland was quite simple: a glass cylinder, holding a little bit of ultrapure water, securely attached to the ground with wooden stakes. Every six hours before, during, and after the hurricane, the researchers would come and empty out the water, which would have collected any particles falling -- both with and without rain -- on Newfoundland. 'It's just a place that experiences a lot of extreme weather events,' says Earth scientist Anna Ryan of Dalhousie University, lead author of the paper. 'Also, it's fairly remote, and it's got a pretty low population density. So you don't have a bunch of nearby sources of microplastics.'

The team found that even before and after Larry, tens of thousands of microplastics fell per square meter of land per day. But when the hurricane hit, that figure spiked up to 113,000. 'We found a lot of microplastics deposited during the peak of the hurricane,' says Ryan, 'but also, overall deposition was relatively high compared to previous studies.' These studies were done during normal conditions, but in more remote locations, she says. The researchers also used a technique known as back trajectory modeling -- basically simulating where the air that arrived at the instrument had been previously. That confirmed that Larry had picked up the microplastics at sea, lofted them into the air, and dumped them on Newfoundland. The Newfoundland study notes that Larry happened to pass over the garbage patch of the North Atlantic Gyre, where currents accumulate floating plastic.

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