Toward 3D Modeling the Plastic Marine Debris in the Mediterranean

A new 2D Lagrangian tracking model with the stochastic representations of beaching and sedimentation of the plastic has been developed. Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service is used as a source of high-resolution datasets on the Mediterranean currents and Stokes drift components. Virtual floating particles are released everyday from the realistic Mediterranean inputs and tracked over 2013–2017, encompassing an overall particle ensemble of ~107 members. Preliminary results show: (1) the pronounced mesoscale dynamics at the sea surface; (2) the elevated abundance of the virtual particles on the coastlines and at the bottom of the Cilician Basin (NE Levantine) and the Catalan Sea sub-basin.