{"id":937470,"date":"2026-05-04T16:35:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T16:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/937470\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T16:35:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T16:35:23","slug":"the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-could-be-part-of-a-hidden-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/937470\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be part of a hidden problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Out in the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and California, is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch<\/a>, a swirl of plastic trash more than twice the size of Texas. As pieces of plastic tumble against each other, they break down into particles tiny enough to be borne aloft on the wind. Once in the air, they have a climate impact that could affect us all, according to new research.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a significant source of airborne microplastics and nanoplastics, but there are many other places where tiny plastic particles can be whipped up into the skies, including from landfills, roadside litter and car tires.\n <\/p>\n

\n A team of scientists from China and the US have studied the makeup and behavior of these plastics, and found they are contributing to global heating, according to the study<\/a> published Monday in the journal Nature.\n <\/p>\n

\n Most microplastics research has focused on their health and environmental dangers, but this report \u201creveals a long overlooked link between plastic pollution and climate change,\u201d said Hongbo Fu, a study author and an atmospheric scientist at Fudan University in Shanghai.\n <\/p>\n

\n The scientists zoomed in on microplastics, usually the size of a pencil eraser or smaller, and nanoplastics, which are the tiniest particles, many times smaller than the width of a human hair. They analyzed color, size and chemistry to understand more about how they interact with sunlight.\n <\/p>\n

\n They wanted to know whether particles scattered sunlight back into space \u2014 meaning they would have a cooling influence on the planet \u2014 or whether they absorbed sunlight, which would have a warming impact.\n <\/p>\n

\n Previous research has suggested microplastics\u2019 contribution to global warming was negligible, but analyses have often assumed particles were clear, the report scientists said. What they found was a rainbow of colors.\n <\/p>\n

\n Colored plastics, especially red, yellow, blue and black, absorbed around 75 times more light than pristine, non-pigmented plastics, the study found. They \u201cact like black T-shirt; they soak up heat,\u201d Fu said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Plastic<\/p>\n

\n Size is also a factor, although to a lesser extent. The smaller the particle, the more sunlight it was able to absorb, the report found. \u201cNanoplastics are tiny but powerful. They stay in the air longer and, for the same mass, they absorb much more sunlight than microplastics,\u201d Fu said.\n <\/p>\n

\n The scientists also found the plastics\u2019 warming impact could change over time. They artificially aged them in the lab using ultraviolet lamps and found that white particles tended to yellow, meaning they absorbed more sunlight. Red particles, on the other hand, sometimes bleached, meaning they scattered more light.\n <\/p>\n

\n Most particles are darker, either because they start that way or darken as they float around the atmosphere and age, said Drew Shindell, a study author and a professor of Earth science at Duke University. The big advance of the paper, is that \u201cwe can pin down that the net effect is that almost all of these particles are warming more than cooling,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Trash<\/p>\n

\n The warming effect may be small at a global level but it\u2019s not insignificant, the scientists said. Microplastics and nanoplastics produce roughly 16% the warming impact of black carbon, or soot, a powerful airborne pollutant.\n <\/p>\n

\n In ocean areas where plastic gets caught in spinning currents, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the warming impact is particularly pronounced and may exceed black carbon, the study found. It\u2019s \u201cbits of plastic hitting other bits of plastic that causes the extra-large flux of material out into the atmosphere,\u201d Shindell said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Experts told CNN the study results are interesting and build on previous findings, but do have significant limitations.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhat\u2019s new here is the numbers,\u201d said Zamin Kanji, group leader of the Atmospheric Physics Lab at ETH Z\u00fcrich in Switzerland, who was not involved in the research. The study systematically quantifies the size and pigment of various plastics and their impact on sunlight, he told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n The finding that microplastics have a warming impact isn\u2019t new however, he said, pointing to a 2021 study<\/a>, which made the same finding. \u201cThe number in the latest study is higher,\u201d Kanji said, but the previous paper projected the impact was likely to rise as more data became available, plastic production rose and plastic already in the environment broke down.\n <\/p>\n

\n We won\u2019t get a full picture of the climate impact until we have better data on how much plastic is in the atmosphere, Kanji said. \u201cThis will take a long time to robustly quantify,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Natalie Mahowald, chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, who was also not involved in the research, said the study shows current levels of microplastics have a very small climate impact, although that could change if levels grow considerably.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn my opinion, the most important impacts of microplastics are likely to be on health, but we still don\u2019t know very much about them,\u201d she told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n The study authors acknowledged it\u2019s exceptionally hard to measure exactly how many plastic particles are in the air, but said they say they are confident that even with these uncertainties, the net impact is warming. \u201cOur work suggests that climate models need to be updated,\u201d Fu said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Out in the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and California, is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirl of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-937470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116517282090489556","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}