A mass budget and box model of global plastics cycling, degradation and dispersal in the land-ocean-atmosphere system

Microplastics and Nanoplastics

Table 2 Global subsurface ocean microplastics budget

Ocean basin	Area	Volume	MP	MP	1σ
Ocean basin	km²	km³	μg m^− 3	Tg	Tg
Arctic Ocean	15,558,000	18,750,000	24	0.4	0.6
North Atlantic	41,490,000	146,000,000	91	13.0	3.0
South Atlantic	40,270,000	160,000,000	91	14.3	3.3
Indian Ocean	70,560,000	264,000,000	43	11.0	11.0
North Pacific	77,010,000	331,000,000	131	42.2	14.1
South Pacific	84,750,000	329,000,000	4	1.2	12.0
Southern Ocean	21,960,000	71,800,000	4	0.3	3.0
Total				82	47

Atlantic, N-Pacific and Arctic Ocean data from Table 1. Microplastics (MP) include fragments and fibers in the 0.3 – 5 mm (LMP) and < 0.3 mm (SMP) range. Data for the S-Pacific and Southern Ocean are extrapolated based on surface Ocean data from Shim et al. [29] with uncertainties set to 10x. No data exists for the Indian Ocean, where concentrations were assumed equal to the S-Atlantic observations by Eo et al. [34] (Table 1). Subsurface oceanic budgets in Tg include do not include the mixed layer (upper 0.1 km)