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Malaysia Airlines MH 370. Drift of potential debris. Dr David Griffin. CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. One of the most tragic and mysterious aviation disasters of all time. How can a plane full of passengers disappear without trace? Conspiracy theories thrive on mysteries
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Malaysia Airlines MH 370 Drift of potential debris Dr David Griffin CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
One of the most tragic and mysterious aviation disasters of all time How can a plane full of passengers disappear without trace? Conspiracy theories thrive on mysteries So Australia suddenly found itself, on 18 March 2014, in charge of a huge investigation The surface search was all but completely halted on 28 April No evidence of the missing plane has yet been found I will not cover the search of the sea-floor for the flight recorders David Griffin
Our job: to advise aircraft where to look for debris that had been drifting for 10+ days, given a range of possible splashpoints Debris with freeboard drifts with the wind+current Submerged debris drifts with current only Near-surface current is sheared Mesoscale and submesoscale eddies take items in various directions Convergences and divergences aggregate and disaggregate items We used 2 Australian models and 2 US models. Today I show only the former David Griffin
Conclusions We can’t be sure why no debris has been found ‘Sightings’ by satellites were unable to be verified There is great uncertainty over the location of the crash site Many days elapsed between the crash and commencement of search operations in the area There might not have been many buoyant items Until any wreckage is found on the sea floor, we can’t validate the surface search areas David Griffin
Conclusions AMSA deployed many GPS-tracked, 1m-deep surface buoys These largely vindicate the drift modelling done in aid of the search The search really put Australia’s real-time oceanographic capability to the test AMSA were very pleased with our work Several timely lessons were learnt David Griffin
The Drift Planning Working Group AMSA Rescue Coordination Centre Asia-Pacific ASA GEMS CSIRO BoM US Coast Guard David Griffin
Thank you David.Griffin@csiro.au www.marine.csiro.au/~griffin