Possible MH370 clue rode ocean currents
Here's how wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could have floated thousands of miles away from the search area off the coast of Australia
From Reuters by Lincoln Feast and Jeffrey Dastin
Vast, rotating currents sweeping the southern Indian Ocean could have deposited wreckage from a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet near Africa, thousands of kilometres from where it is thought to have crashed, oceanographers said on Thursday.
French authorities are studying a piece of plane debris found on Reunion Island, off the east coast of Madagascar, to determine whether it came from Flight MH370, which disappeared without a trace 16 months ago with 239 passengers and crew on board.
If confirmed to be part of the missing Boeing 777, experts will try to model its drift to retrace where the debris could have come from, although they cautioned it was unlikely to help in narrowing down the plane's final resting place beyond the vast swathe of ocean off Australia that has been the focus of the search for months.
"This wreckage has been in the water, if it is MH370, for well over a year so it could have moved so far that its not going to be that helpful in pinpointing precisely where the aircraft is," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters.
"It certainly would suggest the search area is roughly in the right place."
Australia has been leading a search for the plane since analysis of a series of faint satellite "pings" from the aircraft led investigators to conclude that it crashed in the stormy southern Indian Ocean about 2,000 km southwest of Perth.
Ocean current models
Models of ocean currents were consistent with the potential discovery of debris in the tropics, roughly 3,700 km to the northwest, oceanographic experts said.
A huge, counter-clockwise current, called a gyre, covers much of the southern part of the 70.5 million sq km (27.2 million sq miles) Indian Ocean, running east along the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, up the west Australian coast and westward below the equator towards Reunion and Madagascar, before turning south.
Vast, rotating currents sweeping the southern Indian Ocean could have deposited wreckage from a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet near Africa, thousands of kilometres from where it is thought to have crashed, oceanographers said on Thursday.
French authorities are studying a piece of plane debris found on Reunion Island, off the east coast of Madagascar, to determine whether it came from Flight MH370, which disappeared without a trace 16 months ago with 239 passengers and crew on board.
If confirmed to be part of the missing Boeing 777, experts will try to model its drift to retrace where the debris could have come from, although they cautioned it was unlikely to help in narrowing down the plane's final resting place beyond the vast swathe of ocean off Australia that has been the focus of the search for months.
"This wreckage has been in the water, if it is MH370, for well over a year so it could have moved so far that its not going to be that helpful in pinpointing precisely where the aircraft is," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told reporters.
"It certainly would suggest the search area is roughly in the right place."
Australia has been leading a search for the plane since analysis of a series of faint satellite "pings" from the aircraft led investigators to conclude that it crashed in the stormy southern Indian Ocean about 2,000 km southwest of Perth.
Ocean current models
Models of ocean currents were consistent with the potential discovery of debris in the tropics, roughly 3,700 km to the northwest, oceanographic experts said.
A huge, counter-clockwise current, called a gyre, covers much of the southern part of the 70.5 million sq km (27.2 million sq miles) Indian Ocean, running east along the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, up the west Australian coast and westward below the equator towards Reunion and Madagascar, before turning south.
Marked by the green circle, Reunion Island is visible in this map highlighting the complexity of eddies and gyres in the Indian Ocean.
Embedded in overall broad ocean currents are small eddies that create turbulence and make it complicated to track the flow of potential debris.
Embedded in overall broad ocean currents are small eddies that create turbulence and make it complicated to track the flow of potential debris.
source : earth.nullschool.net
On the basis of the aircraft debris that was found on 29 July on the island of Réunion, hydrodynamic experts of Deltares produced a simulation model that indicates that the northern part of the search is now a more likely source of the debris.
Debris tracking flight MH370 based on ocean currents
Deltares experts Maarten van Ormondt and Fedor Baart used a particle tracking routine to compute the movement of debris from different locations in the search area.
The calculation was made using surface currents (assuming that they are the most relevant for the floating debris) from the global HYCOM model.
The results show how debris moves with the counter-clockwise gyre in the Southern Indian Ocean and quickly disperses over large areas.
Particles released in the northern section of the search area arrive at the African coast first within a year of the release time.
Those released in the southern section do not travel as far and do not make it to Africa within the simulation period.
Maarten van Ormondt (a Deltares hydrodynamic expert): ‘The model shows us that the ocean currents are able to carry the debris from the search area west of Australia to Réunion. It also suggests that it is more likely that the debris originates from the northern section of the search area than from the southern part.”
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London, said that, if the debris on Reunion was indeed from MH370, his modelling suggested the aircraft went down in the north of the search zone.
"This westward drift from near Australia all the way across the Indian Ocean can really only happen if the plane went into the water relatively close to the equator," he said.
Finding more debris would help triangulate where MH370 may have hit the water, he added.
Pattiaratchi's modelling shows debris could also drift also as far east as Tasmania or beyond.
"Our model results that we did last year predicted that within 18-24 months after the crash, it was a possibility that it would have ended up within that region," said Charitha Pattiaratchi, Professor of Coastal Oceanography at the University of Western Australia.
The point of origin "will definitely be in the Southern Hemisphere, it would be to the east, it would cover definitely the area of the physical search at the moment", he added.
That physical search, now halfway to being completed, covers 120,000 sq km of sea bed.
Average surface currents since the disappearance of MH370. Colors have been Zissoufied and indicate current speed. Arrows show current direction and larger arrows = faster currents.
source : Dr Martini
Ocean currents in the search area : shows the east to west flow of the Indian Ocean gyre, one of five such major surface currents on Earth.
Maarten van Ormondt (a Deltares hydrodynamic expert): ‘The model shows us that the ocean currents are able to carry the debris from the search area west of Australia to Réunion. It also suggests that it is more likely that the debris originates from the northern section of the search area than from the southern part.”
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London, said that, if the debris on Reunion was indeed from MH370, his modelling suggested the aircraft went down in the north of the search zone.
"This westward drift from near Australia all the way across the Indian Ocean can really only happen if the plane went into the water relatively close to the equator," he said.
Finding more debris would help triangulate where MH370 may have hit the water, he added.
Another computer model developed by Erik van Sebille, an
oceanographer at the Imperial College in London, uses historical ocean currents data to predict the probable paths that objects could take
drifting through the ocean over the course of several months.
This map
shows the model's predictions for an object washing up on the island of
Réunion.
Pattiaratchi's modelling shows debris could also drift also as far east as Tasmania or beyond.
"Our model results that we did last year predicted that within 18-24 months after the crash, it was a possibility that it would have ended up within that region," said Charitha Pattiaratchi, Professor of Coastal Oceanography at the University of Western Australia.
The point of origin "will definitely be in the Southern Hemisphere, it would be to the east, it would cover definitely the area of the physical search at the moment", he added.
That physical search, now halfway to being completed, covers 120,000 sq km of sea bed.
Oceanographers created this chart one year ago showing the potential drift of MH370, starting from the Indian Ocean search zone.
Scientists at The University of Western Australia say there is a consistency between the current search area at Reunion Island and where debris from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 could have drifted to, based on their research.
source : UWA
Scientists at The University of Western Australia say there is a consistency between the current search area at Reunion Island and where debris from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 could have drifted to, based on their research.
source : UWA
Barnacle clues
Dave Gallo, who co-led the search for Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, warned that retracing the debris' drift through sea-current models could lead investigators astray.
Dave Gallo, who co-led the search for Air France Flight 447 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, warned that retracing the debris' drift through sea-current models could lead investigators astray.
"Retro-drifting" from wreckage found just five days after the Air France crash led to no breakthrough, he said.
"We spent two months in that area and found absolutely nothing. That brought mistrust from the industry," said Gallo, director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "Looking at something that is 500 days old is going to be tough."
France's BEA crash investigation agency raised questions in 2012 over the reliability of such "reverse drift" calculations after conducting tests during the search for AF447.
It had asked the French Navy to drop nine buoys at a single spot in the Atlantic, only to find they scattered hundreds of miles apart, highlighting the "great difficulty" of predicting drift.
"We spent two months in that area and found absolutely nothing. That brought mistrust from the industry," said Gallo, director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "Looking at something that is 500 days old is going to be tough."
France's BEA crash investigation agency raised questions in 2012 over the reliability of such "reverse drift" calculations after conducting tests during the search for AF447.
It had asked the French Navy to drop nine buoys at a single spot in the Atlantic, only to find they scattered hundreds of miles apart, highlighting the "great difficulty" of predicting drift.
Experts say such divergences can increase over time.
Still, further clues might yet come from the debris.
Still, further clues might yet come from the debris.
Experts can age the barnacles that attach themselves to flotsam, which would give an idea of how long it had been in the water.
They may even be able to tell which part of the ocean it has come from by the species of barnacles attached.
"There's different barnacles in different parts of the ocean, so you might expect some CSI scenario where just by looking at the barnacles, you can pinpoint where it came from," van Sebille said.
"There's different barnacles in different parts of the ocean, so you might expect some CSI scenario where just by looking at the barnacles, you can pinpoint where it came from," van Sebille said.
Links :
- NYTimes : Search for flight 370
- The Guardian : M370 possible breakthrough debris found Reunion island
- CNN : MH370: Takeoff, disappearance, searches ... and possible debris found
- Gov.uk : UK government offers support to narrow down the search for MH370
- WP (2014) : “Roaring Forties” winds, gyrating ocean currents pose Malaysia plane search nightmare
- GeoGarage blog : Why locating MH370 in the Southern Ocean is so difficult
Reuters : Barnacles on debris could provide clues to missing MH370: experts
ReplyDeleteYouTube : MH370: Drift modelling by CSIRO (Drift analysis undertaken by the CSIRO. This material supports that the debris from MH370 may be found as far west of the search area as La Réunion Island and is consistent with the currently defined Search area.)
ReplyDeleteCSIRO : What does our ocean modeling tell us about the fate of flight MH370?
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