Australia's MH370 search technology questioned

Geoscience Australia has been applying specialist marine geoscience knowledge and capability to assist in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. 

This video describes the key processes of bathymetric mapping and side scan sonar, which are used to gather data within the search area for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

From Reuters by Swati Pandey and Jane Wardell

Nearly a year after embarking on a multi-million dollar quest to solve one of aviation's greatest unsolved mysteries, authorities and search teams are being criticized over their approach to finding Flight MH370 in the remote southern Indian Ocean.

The Australian-led search, already the most expensive in aviation history, has found no trace of the Malaysia Airlines jet or its 239 passengers and crew, prompting calls for a rethink into the way the mission is conducted.

Experts involved in past deep water searches say the search to find MH370 could easily miss the plane as Dutch company Fugro, the firm at the forefront of the mission, is using inappropriate technology for some terrain and inexperienced personnel for the highly specialized task of hunting man-made objects.

Heightening concerns, Australian authorities said on Wednesday that another search vessel, the Go Phoenix, which is using the world's best deep sea search equipment and crew provided by U.S. firm Phoenix International Holdings, would pull out within weeks.

No reason was given for withdrawing the vessel from the quest.

"Fugro is a big company but they don't have any experience in this kind of search and it's really a very specialized job," said Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former French naval officer who was hired by France's air accident investigation agency BEA to co-ordinate the search and recovery of Air France Flight AF447 in 2009.
"This is a big job," Nargeolet told Reuters.

"I'm not an Australian taxpayer, but if I was, I would be very mad to see money being spent like that."

Fugro, which was contracted by the Australian government to operate three ships pulling sonar across the vast 60,000-km search zone, has rejected claims it is using the wrong equipment, saying its gear is rigorously tested.

Still, Nargeolet's concerns are echoed by others in the tightly held deepsea search and rescue industry, who are worried that unless the search ships pass right over any wreckage the sonar scanning either side of the vessels won't pick it up.

Hard yakka ... Crew of the Fugro Discovery at search zone.

Experts also question the lack of data released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on the activities of the Fugro ships.

Three of the bidders rejected for the MH370 contract, U.S. firm Williamson & Associates, France's ixBlue SAS and Mauritius-based Deep Ocean Search, have taken the unusual step of detailing their concerns - months down the track - directly to Australian authorities in correspondence viewed by Reuters.

Several other experts are also critical, including some who requested anonymity, citing the close knit nature of the industry which has just a few companies and militaries capable of conducting deepwater searches.

"I have serious concerns that the MH370 search operation may not be able to convincingly demonstrate that 100 percent seafloor coverage is being achieved," Mike Williamson, founder and president of Williamson & Associates told Reuters.

An area the size of the Torres Strait has been scoured by MH370 search vessels.

Pic: News Corp Australia Source: News Limited

Diving into the unknown

Australia took over the search for the missing plane from Malaysia in late March last year, three weeks after MH370 disappeared off the radar during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The search area was determined by satellite data that revealed the plane turned back sharply over the Malaysian Peninsula and flew undetected for another six hours before crashing into the inhospitable southern Indian Ocean.

The unchartered waters, buffeted by the Roaring Forties winds, stretch as deep as six km, hiding old volcanoes and cliffs in their depths. Australia, Malaysia and China earlier this month agreed to double the search area to 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles).

 Underwater search map extension to 120000 km area

Whether Phoenix International, which has U.S. navy contracts and found the recorders of AF447, will be part of that extended search area is unclear after the ATSB said that Go Phoenix, owned by Australian firm Go Marine, will cease operating on June 19.
Phoenix International, which was contracted separately by the Malaysian government, did not immediately return calls about its position.
The Malaysian government also did not reply to requests for comment.

Found ... An uncharted shipwreck in the southern Indian Ocean.

Picture: Australian Transport Safety Bureau via Getty Images Source: Getty Images

Previous discovery ... The search has previously detected shipping containers on the ocean floor.
Pic: ATSB

Two of the Fugro ships traverse up and down 2.4 km-wide (860 yard) strips of the sea floor, pulling via a cable a towfish that contains sonar equipment, in a technique often called "mowing the lawn".
The towfish coasts around 100 meters (110 yards) above the sea floor, sending out sound waves diagonally across a swath, or broad strip, to produce a flattened image of the seabed.

The Fugro ships are using sonar provided by EdgeTech, the same U.S. company whose sonar was used successfully to find Air France AF447 after it crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.
However, experts say while the type of sonar equipment being used by Fugro gives good results in flat surfaces, it is less well-suited to rugged underwater terrain, a world of confusing shadows.

The ATSB has routinely released detailed data from Go Phoenix, but has not done so for the Fugro ships.

Experts have cobbled together an analysis from glimpses of the sonar use and data in videos and images posted to the ATSB website.

From that, they've gauged the EdgeTech sonars are operating at swathes beyond their optimum capabilities, resulting in poor quality images and leaving side gaps in coverage.
"It makes no sense to be using fine scale tools to cover a massive area; it is like mowing an entire wheat field with a household lawnmower," said Rob McCallum, a vice-president at Williamson & Associates.

Fugro deputy managing director Paul Kennedy said the sonar is running within its capabilities, noting the system identified five "debris-like" objects in 700-meter (765 yards) deep water at a test range off the West Australian coast.

"The test range gives us full confidence the sonars will see the debris field when we cross it," he said.

Stormy weather ... Fugro Discovery experiencing bad weather in the search for MH370.

Picture: ABIS Chris Beerens, RAN Source: Supplied

Wild weather

Fugro is known for its expertise in high-quality low-resolution mapping of sea floors but has far less experience than some of the rejected bidders in deepwater aircraft searches.

It has been involved in 17 search and recovery efforts for aircraft or ships over 15 years, compared with some of the bidders who search for 4-5 aircraft every year.

Kennedy pointed to the find earlier this month of a previously uncharted shipwreck as evidence Fugro was capable of finding the plane.

Concerning experts further is the fact that the third Fugro vessel, which was being used to scan the gaps between the other two ships with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), was this month taken out of action because of encroaching wild winter weather.

That leaves the daily search without an AUV, a much more nimble piece of equipment that was vital in successful search for AF447.

"We are continuously reviewing the search data as it comes in and we are satisfied that the coverage and detection standards we have specified are being met or exceeded," ATSB Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan said in an email.

Links :

• The Guardian : MH370 search is like 'mowing a wheat field with a household mower' – critics

Image of the week : Saint George Basin, Australia

view on Google Maps

From ESA 

This satellite image over the Kimberley region of Australia captures the Saint George Basin along the country’s northwestern coast.

The basin is a deep harbour connected to the sea by a narrow strait.
It is bounded by steep cliffs with large expanses of tidal mud flats and mangroves.

 Saint George Basin (AHS chart in the GeoGarage platform)

The Prince Regent River flows into the basin from the lower-right corner, and the land north of this river is part of the Prince Regent National Park – a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
The Aboriginal Worora people are the traditional owners of this area, which is one of Australia’s most remote.
It is mainly accessed by air or boat, since there are no roads.

The Japanese Advanced Land Observation Satellite captured this image on 16 June 2009.
ALOS was supported as a Third Party Mission, which means that ESA used its multi-mission ground systems to acquire, process, distribute and archive data from the satellite to its user community.
In April 2011 the satellite abruptly lost power while mapping Japan’s tsunami-hit coastline.

Earth's magnetic declination

The magnetic poles (indicated by green circles) slowly move with time.
The magnetic declination varies with time due to changes of the Earth's magnetic field.
Since the 1970's the Magnetic North Pole has accelerated from less than 10 to more than 30 miles per year

From NOAA

Earth is like a giant magnet with a North and South Pole.
However, the magnetic North and South Pole are not aligned with the Geographic North and South Pole.
The Geographic North Pole is defined by the latitude 90° N and is the axis of the Earth's rotation.
The Magnetic North Pole is where the Earth's magnetic field points vertically downward.
The Earth creates its own magnetic field from the electric currents created in the liquid iron-nickel core.
Compass needles point in the direction of the magnetic field lines, which is generally different from the direction to the Geographic North Pole.
The compass pointing direction can also differ from the direction to the Magnetic North Pole since the magnetic field lines are not just circles connecting the magnetic poles.

 1700 map of declination (compass variation) maybe first use of isolines ?

This dataset shows lines of equal magnetic declination (isogonic lines) measured in degrees east (positive) or west (negative) of True North.
The green line is where the declination equals zero and the direction of True North and Magnetic North are equal (agonic line).
The Magnetic North and South Poles are indicated by the green circles.

World Showing the Lines of Equal Magnetic Declination (1896)

original 1858 by Prof. A. Guyot

It is important to know the magnetic declination when using a compass to navigate so that the direction of True North can be determined.
Since the 1970's, the movement of the Magnetic North Pole has accelerated, which is noticeable in this dataset.
In this figure and animation, the magnetic field from 1590 to 1890 is given by the GUFM-1 model of Jackson et al. (2000), while the field from 1900 to 2015 is given by the 11th generation of the International Geomagnetic Reference Field.
Between 1890 and 1900, a smooth transition was imposed between the models.
This visualization uses a transverse aspect of the Plate Carrée projection to minimize distortion near the poles.

Links :

• GeoGarage blog : World Magnetic Model updated / Earth's magnetic field shifts / Earth's core, magnetic field changing fast, study says

Researchers measure giant "internal waves" that help regulate climate

This animation shows density layers in the South China Sea being perturbed by the regular back-and-forth tidal flow through the Luzon Strait.

These leads to large amplitude internal waves (shown in red underwater, and in white when seen from above), being radiated west to the Chinese continental shelf.

From Phys

Once a day, a wave as tall as the Empire State Building and as much as a hundred miles wide forms in the waters between Taiwan and the Philippines and rolls across the South China Sea – but on the surface, it is hardly noticed.

Simulation of internal waves of the South China Sea by Dr. Harper Simmons of the University of Alaska Fairbanks using Arctic Region Supercomputer Center High Performance Computing resources. Visualization by the University of Washington Center for Environmental Visualization).

These daily monstrosities are called "internal waves" because they are beneath the ocean surface and though scientists have known about them for years, they weren't really sure how significant they were because they had never been fully tracked from cradle to grave.

Surprisingly, internal waves can sometimes be seen clearly in satellite imagery (like in the above image of the Luzon Strait).

This is because the internal waves create alternating rough and smooth regions of the ocean that align with the crest of the internal wave.

Sunlight reflects the smooth sections, appearing as white arcs, while the rough sections stay dark.

But a new study, published this week in Nature Research Letter, documents what happens to internal waves at the end of their journey and outlines their critical role in global climate.
The international research project was funded by the Office of Naval Research and the Taiwan National Science Council.

"Ultimately, they are what mixes heat throughout the ocean," said Jonathan Nash, an Oregon State University oceanographer and co-author on the study. "
Without them, the ocean would be a much different place.
It would be significantly more stratified – the surface waters would be much warmer and the deep abyss colder.
"It's like stirring cream into your coffee," he added. "Internal waves are the ocean's spoon."

Internal waves help move a tremendous amount of energy from Luzon Strait across the South China Sea, but until this project, scientists didn't know what became of that energy.
As it turns out, it's a rather complicated picture.
A large fraction of energy dissipates when the wave gets steep and breaks on the deep slopes off China and Vietnam, much like breakers on the beach.

Researchers from the Office of Naval Research's multi-institutional Internal Waves In Straits Experiment (IWISE) -- including from Princeton University -- have published the first 'cradle-to-grave' model of internal waves, which are subsurface ocean displacements recognized as essential to the distribution of nutrients and heat. The researchers modeled the internal waves that move through the Luzon Strait between southern Taiwan and the Philippine island of Luzon. Credit: Maarten Buijsman, University of Southern Mississippi

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-giant-internal-climate.html#jCp

Researchers from the Office of Naval Research's multi-institutional Internal Waves In Straits Experiment (IWISE) -- including from Princeton University -- have published the first 'cradle-to-grave' model of internal waves, which are subsurface ocean displacements recognized as essential to the distribution of nutrients and heat.

The researchers modeled the internal waves that move through the Luzon Strait between southern Taiwan and the Philippine island of Luzon.

Credit: Maarten Buijsman, University of Southern Mississippi

But part of the energy remains, with waves reflecting from the coast and rebounding back into the ocean in different directions.
The internal waves are caused by strong tides flowing over the topography, said Nash, who is in OSU's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.
The waves originating in Luzon Strait are the largest in the world, based on the region's tidal flow and topography.
A key factor is the depth at which the warm- and cold-water layers of the ocean meet – at about 1,000 meters.
The waves can get as high as 500 meters tall and 100-200 kilometers wide before steepening.
"You can actually see them from satellite images," Nash said.
"They will form little waves at the ocean surface, and you see the surface convergences piling up flotsam and jetsam as the internal wave sucks the water down. They move about 2-3 meters a second."

The graph above shows the band-passed semidiurnal baroclinic energy flux magnitudes.

The waves also have important global implications.

In climate models, predictions of the sea level 50 years from now vary by more than a foot depending on whether the effects of these waves are included.
"These are not small effects," Nash said.

This new study, which was part of a huge international collaboration involving OSU researchers Nash and James Moum – as well as 40 others from around the world – is the first to document the complete life cycle of these huge undersea waves.

The complexity of the Luzon Strait's two-ridge system was not previously known.
The Princeton researchers' simulations showed that the two ridges of the Luzon Strait greatly amplify the size and energy of the waves, well beyond the sum of what the two ridges would generate separately.
The simulation above of the tide moving over the second, or western, ridge shows that the tidally-driven flow reaches a high velocity (top) as it moves down the slope (left to right), creating a large wave in density (black lines) with concentrated turbulent energy dissipation (bottom).
As the tide moves back over the ridge, the turbulence is swept away.
For both the velocity and energy dissipation panels, the color scale indicates the greatest velocity or energy (red) to the least amount (blue).
Credit: Image by Maarten Buijsman, University of Southern Mississippi

Links : 

• YouTube : Internal waves in the Strait of Gibraltar
• LiveScience : Amazing waves discovered in Deep-Ocean Trench 
• Nature : The formation and fate of internal waves in the South China Sea
• Scripps : Study giant south china sea internal waves provides first ever view their entire life-cycle

The new Silk Road: A visionary dream for the 21st century

Silk Road & Maritime Silk Road

From Forbes by Jean-Pierre Lehmann

The New Silk Road may be the dream to inspire coming generations.
This seems all the more the case when set in the historical context of the last half-century.
If it were to become reality, it could be a major inspirational epochal game-changer.
Whether it’s a dream or a nightmare depends in great part on the spirit with which the opportunity is seized and the challenge tackled.

The past golden years

When British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan made his speech on 20 July 1957 saying “You’ve never had it so good”, he was right.
I was 12 years old then and life and its prospects, for a Western European adolescent, did seem good and promising.
Of course I was conscious that it was not like that everywhere.
The year before, 1956, there had been the Hungarian Uprising and its brutal suppression (including the killing of children my age) by Soviet troops.
But as a Western European I realize that ours is the luckiest generation ever.
My grand-father was in World War I, my father in World War II, my mother a refugee from the Spanish Civil War, they experienced the depression, the rise of extremist ideologies, genocide, along with all the other dreadful things that happened.
My generation got peace, prosperity and instead of European War, the European Union.
Not only was the West a far better place than it had been, but things seemed to keep getting better; it was an age of optimism.
In the early 1960s I was living in Washington DC, where racist bigotry pervaded the city and the country; on 28 August 1963, the day before my 18th birthday, Martin Luther King’ gave his famous “I have a dream” speech; it ignited and inspired a whole generation.
Along with the struggle against racism in the West, there was the struggle against sexism, for women’s liberation.
Yes, there was hatred and ugliness, but, as in the lyrics of the famous song of that era, we knew that “We Shall Overcome“.
There was bleakness in the 1970s, including the oil crises, unemployment and inflation soaring, terrorist movements such as the Baader Meinhof in Germany, the Rengo Sekigun and the (Charles) Manson Family in the US.
These were to some extent counterbalanced by a number of more positive developments.
With the deaths of their respective dictators, Salazar and Franco, Portugal and Spain renounced their military dictatorships and embraced democracy.
At the other end of the planet, the Cultural Revolution ended in China, Mao Zedong died and the economic reform program was about to be launched.
If the era were put to a symphony, the grand finale, with drums, cymbals, French horns and the entire orchestral works, molto giojoso, would come in the early 1990s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire, the end of apartheid in South Africa, reforms and opening up in India, the establishment of the World Trade Organization, continuing opening of China, reforms in Vietnam, democratization in South America, also in Korea and Taiwan, etc, etc!

The dark years

However, the euphoria of the end of the last century has been followed by disillusionment, or worse, in this century.
There continue to be good things happening, but the overall global ambience is depressing and the outlook discouraging.
Youth unemployment has soared pretty much everywhere, the looming threat of climate change is, well, left to loom, the US and China seem more headed to confrontation rather than collaboration, as the sequels of the catastrophic UK-US invasion of Iraq not only linger, but fester, the situation in the Levant is dramatic, we have the terrible tragedy of the Rohingyas, the many deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean, the consequences of the global financial crisis, the rise of populist parties, the resurgence of nationalism, the cynicism and criminality of too much of the finance industry, and perhaps above all in lieu of the optimism that pervaded my generation, growing pessimism and fatalism among the coming generations.
So I’m ok. I will have had a very good and lucky life.
But I worry for my grandchildren.
And I worry all the more because I do not have sufficient confidence that our business and political leaders, obsessed by cynical egotistical material short-termism are concerned about the next generations.
What kind of planet do we want to leave behind?

The past and future promise of the New Silk Road?

It is in this context that ever since the announcement of its launching I have been intrigued by the vision of The New Silk Road – or, to give it its full rendition, The New Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Route.
I have since followed developments closely; I was privileged to attend in December last year a meeting in Qianhai (Shenzhen), jointly organized by the Qianhai Institute for Innovative Research (QIIR) and the Italian Ambrosetti Group, on the 21st century Maritime Silk Road, and with my great and dynamic class at Hong Kong University this last month we have had wide-ranging, intensive and stimulating conversations on the subject.
I shall also be presenting findings at a major annual event, Orchestrating Winning Performance, at IMD, in Lausanne (Switzerland), next month.
It is a fascinating prospect at every level.

The Silk Road and its maritime Spice Route (see above) lie at the origins of globalization not only in the transmission of goods, but in the transmission of ideas, knowledge, culture, religions, science and technology.
The Silk Road lasted and flourished from the first century BCE until the mid-15th century, challenged and ultimately superseded by the rise of the Portuguese seaborne empire.
The Spice Route was initially mainly the preserve of the Arabs, its point of departure was in Indonesia, which it will also be for the New Maritime Silk Road: spices were the first globally traded product.
The legacy of the Silk Road in history is enormous as it is in art, literature, science and architecture.
The Great Colonnade in Palmyra, Syria, that ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) threatens to destroy, is one of the multiple grandiose and awe-inspiring examples, as is the Kalyan Minaret and Mosque in Bukhara, Uzbekistan (see illustration below).
In Europe, Venice was a major destination for the merchants of the Silk Road, hence of the prosperity and beauty of La Serenissima, as Venice is called; the plan for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road is also to make Venice a key destination.

Of course the Silk Road and the Spice Route of the past were very much about money.
There was a pecuniary goal.
But the cultural wealth that was generated was immense.
Global civilization would be much the poorer without it.
The historical Silk Road is a major source of inspiration, wonder and dreams.
Can the 21st century Silk Road be anything of the sort?
The answer to that question all depends on how political, business and thought leaders approach and develop the opportunity.
Looking at the project it is clear it includes (of course) economic objectives on the part of he Chinese, and it is also clear it has a geopolitical dimension in the context of the US-China rivalry.
But if it is adopted as a global project it could also provide a great and dynamic fillip to the global mood and activity.
The fact that 57 countries chose to defy Washington and become founding members of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the financial institution behind the New Silk Road, is an encouraging sign: among major potential members only Canada, Japan and the US chose to stay out.
So it already is a global, or certainly trans-Eurasian project.
There is the engineering feat it will represent.
It will re-engineer the planet much in the same way as the railroad did in the 19th century – something which was also a source of dreams and wonder beyond just the mundane bit of going from A to B.
Remember, among others, the Orient Express (see illustration below)!
It will include regions, Western China and Central Asia – Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Iraq and Syria – that were hubs of globalization at the time of the Old Silk Road, but in more recent times have been marginalized, described as the “orphans” of globalization.
The New Silk Road might give would-be Jihadists other more constructive dreams to pursue than their current destructive nihilistic fanaticism.
With the current forces of de-globalization threatening the prospects of future global prosperity and peace, the New Silk Road might give a boost to re-globalization.

The New Silk Road and Maritime Route can bring about the reintegration of the Eurasian continent. The potential boost for an increasingly inward-looking and morose Europe is enormous.
While the New Silk Road encompasses three continents – Asia, Africa and Europe – for the moment the “new world” of the Americas does not feature.
A compelling recent publication by Germán Muñoz, President of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, proposes how the New Silk Road might link up with another historic global route, the Ruta de La Plata, which served as the conduit for the transport of Mexican silver (the international currency of the time) to Asia from the 15th to the 19th centuries, arguing that: “History can provide lessons for the future, and the legacy of La Ruta de la Plata has great potential – and not just in trade itself. It also provides a template, as do the Silk Roads, for enhanced multilateral cooperation, regional development and integration of Asia and Latin America.”

The New Silk Road is not a given.
There are pitfalls.
But the prospects are also mind-boggling.
It behooves the world, especially the major powers, to tackle the challenge with enthusiastic clear-eyed determination.
It is the kind of visionary dream that could inspire the next generations … including my seven grand-children!

Links :

• OilPrice : New 'Silk Road' could alter global economics
• GeoGarage blog : Mystery of island visited by 15th Century Chinese explorer Zheng He now solved / Restored map reveals early Arabian trade links with China