[Peetwo]

The DOI - Part III

Blue Whale in the SIO??

It is strange but no one seems to be prepared to talk about the Blue Whale in the SIO, i.e. the more potential parts that keep on washing up on the SE Coast of Africa the less likely it is that the ATSB SIO search priority area is the highest probability final resting place of MH370..  

The DOI (debris of inconvenience) - Part II

From Minister Chester's 24 March press release - Examination of debris recovered from Mozambique - it is starting to become pretty obvious that the government has drawn a line in the sand on the current ATSB defined MH370 search priority area, from which they feel they cannot retreat:

“The analysis has concluded the debris is almost certainly from MH370,” Mr Chester said.

“That such debris has been found on the east coast of Africa is consistent with drift modelling performed by CSIRO and further affirms our search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean.

This is despite much expert opinion & well researched factual evidence to the contrary view, that the debris findings (almost certainly from MH370) on Reunion Island and the Mozambique/South African coast could not possibly have come from the SIO search priority area.

The following blog piece from Mike Chillit perfectly highlights this strange disconnection :

Australia’s Drift Model

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Mike Chillit — Leave a reply 

 

 
Despite the Chillit comment,..

"..But I have the distinct impression David and his work have been heavily influenced by the internal national politics of this search: possibly by the Abbott administration early on, but certainly now by the Turnbull administration. Mr. Turnbull seems determined to prove ATSB has been right about something all along, even if it has been mostly wrong about everything..."

..I would argue this 'passing strange' disparity with popular opinion & empirical evidence is nothing new for the Infrastructure & Transport Ministry and it's agencies.

You only need look at the Civil Aviation Act regulatory reform program, where the bureaucracy has been lording the 'mystique of aviation safety' over governments (of both persuasions) and industry for 30+ years and at a cost of $300 + million (& counting) for little to no benefit, except possibly the decimation of a vital industry..  

An update to my DOI chain of posts - It would seem that the debris will continue to keep appearing in and around the East coast of Africa & Madagascar. However as the number of possible pieces of MH370 (including what appears to be an internal piece - see HERE) keeps on adding up, the ATSB & Minister Chester still won't concede that there is an ever decreasing probability that they are searching the wrong part of the 7th Arc or maybe even the wrong sector of the IO.

I guess from the point of view of the Australian government this is somewhat understandable, for to concede they may have got it even slightly wrong would lead to further scrutiny & criticism. Which could then lead to intense international pressure to continue the search, possibly until the whole of the northern section of the Indian Ocean 7th arc is complete.

 In all these debris discovery shenanigans, theories, counter theories etc. I still have a niggling doubt about the ATSB (at least at the executive level) true hand on heart commitment to the defined and then slightly re-defined search priority area...

Maybe it is a prejudice that I carry witnessing the lies, deception and obfuscation by the Dolan led ATSB in the PelAir cover-up? Maybe it is the bizarre scenario that we all witnessed where AMSA, the SAR experts, were dumped in favour of the ATSB? - Still can't get my head around that, as the AMSA I once knew would have exhausted all possible avenues, outside theories, lines of inquiry etc. before abandoning the surface search.

Anyway the following is an example of why I have these lingering doubts.

To begin, reflecting on some of the historical articles and blogs on the debris drift theories, I happened to re-read the CSIRO blog - What does our ocean modeling tell us about the fate of flight MH370?

Graeme Harrison's reply posts very closely reflect my views on the shortcomings of the ATSB led research/actions/inactions to establish the MH370 SIO search priority area:

5 August 2015 - And further to my earlier comment, the CSIRO approach to the Reunion find of a flaperon is that this confirms our belief that the original ‘search area’ was correct.


But the contrary interpretation is that the flaperon proves that there was debris – ie the ‘whole plane’ did not land without breaking apart and thus sink as an intact-whole. But if we now accept that there was debris at the site of the crash, before it drifted away and slowly dispersed, SURELY the initial fly-overs would have spotted such floating debris? As no floating debris was spotted in the ‘SW of Perth’ corridor, the finding of any substantial piece of debris actually lessens the chance that this is the true location of the crash.


And yes, I am aware that there was a two-week delay before any search was conducted in this area, but I still suggest (in light of the flaperon find) that some debris should have been noticed in any area, before it could be described as the likely crash zone.


What should happen now is a computerised ‘pixel search’ for aluminium-reflection spectrum peaks in the Indian Ocean visual satellite data from the date of the crash till May (when the flaperon stopped on the Reunion beach). If one is to believe the capability of US and Russian satellite capabilities, there should be lots of ‘track strips’ of video as satellites passed overhead. As some point the sun glinting off such a piece of debris should have caused some glary pixels at the point of that debris at that time. Both US and Russian spy agencies should be asked to again focus their attention on any data they might be able to glean by re-examination of their satellite data as already collected. And the US needs to release clear data from Diego Garcia’s long-range radars on the night the plane disappeared, so that the plane’s other potential path along the North of the Indian Ocean can truly be ruled out. 


Sightings by a US woman sailing a yacht from India to Thailand on the night, and observers in the Maldives recorded a low-level large jet flying along the Northern Indian Ocean trajectory. There were no human observations that supported the (less populated) Southern trajectory that the CSIRO favoured, due to ‘ping delay times’, which confirmed only that either a Northern or Southern route was likely.

[/url]5th August 2015 at 7:51 pm


I think the radar type you are hoping for is “submarine search radar” where satellites of major military powers might be probing for the reflection of any metal objects at water level or not too deep below that. Given the USA and Russian preference for tracking all of their opponent’s pieces on the chess board at all times, it does seem funny that there are not logs that could be examined to ‘reverse track’ the journey of that flaperon.

I don’t believe that “being heavy” would help debris deposited near the outer-reaches of a gyre to get to “the centre of the gyre” quickly. Wouldn’t the heavier object (once given velocity by the current) be the one to ‘spin outwards’ more than lighter objects, even though the centrifugal force is low, due to low rate of spin. In other words, greater mass provides greater angular momentum.

The bigger issue would be if any component was ‘well out of the water’ acting as a sail, in terms of separating that piece of debris from the rest of the debris. But the flaperon appears to have been almost submerged or close to surface level. But after the crash research team has analysed the part, it would be useful to then ‘float it’ in tropical-temperature seawater, to see if it assumes a single natural float position, or if there are more than one such position indicated by both float tests and barnacle growth. That might give some estimates of any ‘sail effect’.

I think it is time to get Boeing to ‘offer’ a few defective flaperons that never made quality control. Then next March, they should be set adrift in various locations, including at least one at the ‘SW of Perth’ search area, and another on approach to Diego Garcia from the East. Each one should be fitted with a tethered GPS tracker and radio beacon. Then let’s see where those near-identical items travel in the Indian Ocean, from March 2016 till May 2017, to imitate the journey the original one took from March 2014 to May 2015 when it reached Reunion. Yes, the gyre is a complex system, so one will never be exactly retracing a path, but that test will certainly exclude a whole bunch of alternative starting locations. And if you want to work out how a flaperon drifts with current and wind, there is no substitute for real near-identical flaperons! Because the drift path does depend upon the object shape and buoyancy, there is no substitute for using the identical shape and buoyancy. And yes, the tracking will take a year to run, but I suspect that this will be like finding the Titanic many decades after it went missing, but without the final latitude and longitude being already known!

   

[url=https://blog.csiro.au/what-does-our-ocean-modelling-tell-us-about-the-fate-of-flight-mh370/#comment-2812]7th August 2015 at 5:03 pm


David, yes, the flaperons should be set adrift from the various trial starting points mid-March 2016, to mimic the seasonal effects of MH370’s crash in mid-March 2014. And if Boeing can provide some ‘failed’ flaperons, for the trial an air-proof bladder may need to be installed at least in one end, to prevent sinking, as it may have been sheer fluke that the ‘found’ flaperon did not sink over its journey. And if no flaperons are available, then it would be easy to mock-up some using aluminium sheeting and again install a bladder of just sufficient size to ensure against sinking. Small GPS and sat-phone could be installed in plastic box mounted on top surface. Solar panel could be installed if needed, though device only needs to log GPS once per day.


And only if no flaperons are made available, and ‘mock-up’ flaperons are deemed ‘too hard’, then using near-netural-buoyancy buoys is still worthwhile, and cheap compared to mapping sea floor.


If it was up to me, I’d start one at SW extent of current search area arc; a second at NE extent of current search area arc; a third 100km East of Diego Garcia (to see if that general area can be ruled out by current drifts over 16 months to Reunion); and a fourth half-way between the search area and Diego Garcia (to complete the model). I think CSIRO should do that modelling for the Australian search team. Then see where these items end up after 16 months afloat.


Without doing this ‘real test’, we’ll still have politicians claiming that the Reunion debris supports current search area, despite no debris having been found in that region shortly after the crash. This approach is putting faith ahead of the facts.

Brock McEwen says


15th August 2015 at 5:39 am
Here is my best attempt to compare and contrast various drift models which have been used in the past year to assess MH370 surface debris probabilities – including CSIRO’s latest. I hope it helps generate robust discussion:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-r3yua...sp=sharing
Reply

• Graeme Harrison says
  
  17th August 2015 at 4:14 pm
  
  Excellent work Brock. I think the most telling bits of text from your summary of models are:
  
  1. “The closer the start point is to Fugro’s latest search extension, the less feasible landfall on RI [Reunion Island] becomes”; and
  2. The statement that the ‘forward drift models’ from ATSB’s latest search zone for 14 months and the ‘reverse drift models’ from the ‘given’ of a landing at Reunion show “no co-mingling”.
  
  I think what will go down in history as complete hubris is that initial claim (after the flaperon find) by authorities that a large floating part of the plane washing up on Reunion Island “is entirely consistent with” the current search zone. And Nicholas Kachel’s comment “it appears our [CSIRO] original predictions may have been on the money” is a statement of belief, not facts. If we needed those, we’d turn to religion.
  
  As I posted earlier, if anything, the Reunion flaperon find ‘mildly disproves’ the search zone, as now that we know there was floating debris, including large reflective pieces, why was none found on any initial fly-overs (even given the two week delay)? The ATSB search zones have only had credibility while people thought it credible that the plane might have sunk ‘intact’. As I also posted, this new find should trigger a ‘re-search’ of satellite fly-over visual data and radar data, to see if any field of debris can be found, now that we know there was one.
  
  And on a bigger note, I think this drift modelling discussion for MH370 will change future search protocols for any future ‘missing planes’. It has been standard maritime practice for a century that if someone is lost overboard, you immediately throw something that floats to that same location (or as close as practicable). So why didn’t the first search planes drop GPS satellite broadcast buoys as the first ‘action’ over each new search area. If one had been dropped by an early surveillance plane over the NE and SW extremes of the search arc, the ‘actual’ drift pattern could have been observed/tracked. Instead we are left arguing over models of a complex system, when we could have had ‘reality’. If, at the May 2015 date that the flaperon was first observed on a Reunion beach, those buoys were only half-way from Australia to Reunion in the Northern part of the Indian Ocean gyre, then we’d know almost for certain that the plane crashed in a more anti-clockwise location on the gyre (than the current search area). This should be a sharp reminder to ATSB RAAF search experts, and advising experts at the CSIRO to ‘take on board’ (pun intended) what ship captains have known for a century (at least): Nothing beats a floating marker!
  Reply
  • 4th September 2015 at 3:54 pm
    
    And now (a month later) on 4 Sept 2015, we have the Sydney Morning Herald reprinting a report by The Telegraph, London that “A team at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel ran extensive computer modelling of ocean currents to trace how the flaperon could have ended up on Reunion.”
    
    The German Kiel-based scientists who are experts in ocean drift are saying that the flaperon must have been ‘deposited’ about 3200km North of the current search area for it to have drifted to Reunion Island in the time taken.
    
    The SMH article is entitled “MH370 investigators ‘looking in wrong place'” and is at:
    http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh370-investigators-looking-in-wrong-place-20150903-gjesjl.html
    
    (though SMH articles are free to view for only some initial days after posting, thence paywall)
    
    The point of my earlier postings here a month ago were along the very same lines “MH370 investigators ‘looking in wrong place'”
    
    The article goes on to note: “Our results show that the current focus of the search south-west of Australia may be too far south,” said Jonathan Durgadoo, one of the researchers.
    
    The study found a number of possible locations for where the aircraft may have crashed. But only one corresponded to the arc of possible last positions from analysis of the plane’s satellite pings: an area of some 518 square kilometres off the south coast of Java.
    
    Separately, the barnacles found on the flaperon might indicate a more northerly crash site, but the Helmholtz Centre said its team had not been able to analyse the barnacles.
    
    While I am a huge enthusiast for what the CSIRO do in general, I again say that coming out and saying that the flaperon find confirmed the original search zone was sheer hubris. The biggest counter-argument is not the German ‘different’ drift modelling, but rather the lack of any debris originally found in the official search zone (now that we know debris did eventuate).
    
    

Understand that I have absolutely no idea what his background is or if he is qualified to comment, however as a former SAR pilot the logic and considered opinions within Graeme's posts I can very much relate. It should be remembered that the CSIRO relationship with marine SAR drift model development goes back a good many years but based on working very closely under the terms of an MoU with AMSA, not the ATSB:

In a recent media release, CSIRO’s Kirsten Lea outlines the organisation’s role in the search for the missing airliner. As it happens, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) and CSIRO have a “Memorandum of Understanding”, which allows the former to request CSIRO’s help “during a maritime incident” and draw upon its technical and scientific expertise.

 
MTF...P2