North Pacific Vortex
The North Pacific Gyre (. English North Pacific gyre ) is a marine drift current in the northern subtropics of the Pacific Ocean between Passat - and westerlies . The clockwise rotating vortex is one of the five largest of its kind on Earth. Together with the smaller subpolar vortex, it covers the Pacific of the northern hemisphere . In the east it is formed by the California Current , in the south by the North Equatorial Current , in the west by the Kuroshio Current and in the north by the North Pacific Current .
Due to the large accumulations of plastic waste within the eddy, the North Pacific eddy is cited again and again as an example of the pollution of the oceans by humans and is nicknamed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch ( Great Pacific Garbage Patch ). It can be easily seen near Midway Atoll, but access to the atoll is difficult as it is a game reserve.
The North Pacific vortex covers an area of around 1.6 million km². Between 79,000 and 129,000 tons of plastic waste was collected in it.
According to the German Federal Environment Agency, there were 100 to 150 million tons of waste in the oceans in 2013 , 60% of which was plastic. This corresponds to between 60 and 90 million tons of plastic waste, of which a maximum of 0.14% was accumulated in the North Pacific vortex.
literature
- Lynne D. Talley, George L. Pickard, William J. Emery, James H. Swift: Descriptive Physical Oceanography: An Introduction . Academic Press, London, UK 2011, ISBN 0750645520 .
- David M. Karl: A Sea of Change: Biogeochemical Variability in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre . In: Springer (Ed.): Ecosystems . 2, 1999, pp. 181-214. JSTOR 3658829 . doi : 10.1007 / s100219900068 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ L. Leptreton et al .: Evidence did the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is Rapidly accumulating plastic. In: www.nature.com/Scientificreports. Nature, March 22, 2018, accessed October 10, 2019 .