Predicting the fate of microplastics in estuaries and the ocean poses several new fluid dynamics research challenges from the microscale of modeling how noninertial and inertial plastic particles of wide-ranging shapes and sizes interact with waves and turbulence to the macroscale of modeling their accumulation at submesoscale fronts and their transport between the open ocean and coastal regions.
“Fluid dynamics challenges in predicting plastic pollution transport in the ocean: A perspective” outlines recent research progress and identifies outstanding problems for theorists, experimentalists, and numerical modelers. This invited Perspective paper is guided in part by talks and discussions that took place (virtually) at the Banff International Research Station in February 2022.
