TY - JOUR A1 - Miron, Philippe A1 - Beron-Vera, Francisco A1 - Helfmann, Luzie A1 - Koltai, Péter T1 - Transition paths of marine debris and the stability of the garbage patches JF - Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science N2 - We used transition path theory (TPT) to infer "reactive" pathways of floating marine debris trajectories. The TPT analysis was applied on a pollution-aware time-homogeneous Markov chain model constructed from trajectories produced by satellite-tracked undrogued buoys from the NOAA Global Drifter Program. The latter involved coping with the openness of the system in physical space, which further required an adaptation of the standard TPT setting. Directly connecting pollution sources along coastlines with garbage patches of varied strengths, the unveiled reactive pollution routes represent alternative targets for ocean cleanup efforts. Among our specific findings we highlight: constraining a highly probable pollution source for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; characterizing the weakness of the Indian Ocean gyre as a trap for plastic waste; and unveiling a tendency of the subtropical gyres to export garbage toward the coastlines rather than to other gyres in the event of anomalously intense winds. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0030535 VL - 31 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Beron-Vera, Francisco Javier A1 - Olascoaga, Maria Josefina A1 - Helfmann, Luzie A1 - Miron, Philippe T1 - Sampling-Dependent Transition Paths of Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water JF - Journal of Physical Oceanography N2 - In this note, we apply Transition Path Theory (TPT) from Markov chains to shed light on the problem of Iceland-Scotland Overflow Water (ISOW) equatorward export. A recent analysis of observed trajectories of submerged floats demanded revision of the traditional abyssal circulation theory, which postulates that ISOW should steadily flow along a deep boundary current (DBC) around the subpolar North Atlantic prior to exiting it. The TPT analyses carried out here allow to focus the attention on the portions of flow from the origin of ISOW to the region where ISOW exits the subpolar North Atlantic and suggest that insufficient sampling may be biasing the aforementioned demand. The analyses, appropriately adapted to represent a continuous input of ISOW, are carried out on three time-homogeneous Markov chains modeling the ISOW flow. One is constructed using a high number of simulated trajectories homogeneously covering the flow domain. The other two use much fewer trajectories which heterogeneously cover the domain. The trajectories in the latter two chains are observed trajectories or simulated trajectories subsampled at the observed frequency. While the densely sampled chain supports a well-defined DBC, the more heterogeneously sampled chains do not, irrespective of whether observed or simulated trajectories are used. Studying the sampling sensitivity of the Markov chains, we can give recommendations for enlarging the existing float dataset to improve the significance of conclusions about time-asymptotic aspects of the ISOW circulation. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-22-0172.1 VL - 53 IS - 4 SP - 1151 EP - 1160 ER -