Fig. 4: Optimized global plastic discharge (Mt, metric tons).
From: Plastic waste discharge to the global ocean constrained by seawater observations
The estimation is derived from a three-dimensional variational method powered by a super ensemble of model parameters and emission inventories. The thicker black line represents the ensemble mean with thinner orange ones for each member. The curve is the probability distribution function (pdf) of the optimized global plastic emissions, which is assumed to be a log-normal distribution based on the simulated surface plastic mass (Supplementary Fig. 2). The short gray vertical lines mark the 95% confidence interval. The minimum and maximum discharges derived from models #52 and #51, which are not shown in the figure, are 102.9 and 107.0 Mt, respectively.
