Scientists have long known that microplastics are found in our food, water, and even the air we breathe. But here’s the unexpected twist: these tiny plastic fragments floating in the air are actually contributing to global warming. Colored microplastic particles absorb sunlight and trap heat, making a noticeable contribution to global warming.

The study was led by Drew Shindell, a professor of Earth science at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, in collaboration with a team from Fudan University in China. The results were published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Plastic gets into the air when larger debris breaks down into tiny particles that are carried into the atmosphere by wind and sea spray, Planet Today reports.

Scientists have long known that suspended particles, or aerosols, can affect the climate. Soot is a classic example. It is rich in black carbon, one of the most powerful drivers of global warming known to us. Before this study, the topic of microplastics simply was not part of the discussion.

“This study expands the range of aerosols that actually cause warming, and that makes microplastics an especially suitable target for climate action,” Shindell said.

In earlier climate models, airborne microplastics were treated as virtually colorless. Colorless particles generally reflect sunlight back into space, creating a slight cooling effect.

According to the old assumption, microplastics were practically irrelevant for climate purposes. Shindell’s work completely overturns that assumption, and the whole difference comes down to something almost ridiculously simple: color.

Using computer modeling combined with laboratory experiments, the team investigated how light and heat behave near microscopic fragments of plastic.

They found that airborne microplastics come in a wide range of colors, and those colors often become more intense as the plastic ages and is exposed to weathering. It is this pigmentation that gives the debris its heat-trapping ability.

The scale of the problem is what really stands out. Pigmented microplastics absorb about 16 percent less heat than soot, but that is still enough to place them among aerosols of serious concern.

Shindell puts it in concrete terms: airborne microplastics are currently causing about as much warming each year as 200 coal-fired power plants. However, he is quick to offer a clear perspective: “Tackling microplastics will in no way solve our climate problem.”

The team also mapped where this airborne microplastic accumulates around the world, and the resulting picture looked nothing like the pattern for black carbon. Black carbon is concentrated mostly over land. Microplastics, by contrast, accumulate in large quantities over an area of the ocean known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre. This enormous current system stretches across nearly 8 million square miles and is already infamous for collecting floating plastic waste.

However, the collected plastic does not just sit there doing nothing. When waves crash and sea spray rises, microplastic particles are lifted straight into the air, turning this gyre into one of the largest sources of plastic air pollution on the planet. It is a closed feedback loop that no one had really connected before: plastic pollution in the ocean directly leads to plastic pollution in the atmosphere.

Shindell is not yet ready to call microplastics an independent major cause of climate change, at least not for now. His study focused specifically on microplastics suspended in the air near the Earth’s surface.

He hopes these findings will encourage other research groups to measure microplastic levels throughout the rest of the lower atmosphere. The goal is to eventually build a complete picture of how much these factors really contribute to warming.

A fuller picture may prove important sooner rather than later. Plastic pollution is expected to rise sharply over the next decade. Without real action — cutting plastic use and waste, while improving plastic handling and recycling methods — the amount of plastic entering the environment could increase by 50 percent compared with 2020 levels, reaching 30 million tons by 2040.

Shindell hopes findings like these will strengthen the hand of countries signing the UN plastics treaty aimed at ultimately ending plastic pollution. “We have an enormous amount of work ahead of us to get to something like the Paris Agreement. We really need everything at our disposal,” he concluded.