[Peetwo]

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

The particular drift model Australia’s ATSB has endorsed was developed by that nation’s CSIRO, a behemoth organization with considerable local influence; if somewhat less international recognition. The CSIRO drift model was prepared by Dr. David Griffin one month after the flaperon appeared on Reunion Island. Until then, Australia had repeatedly insisted debris was most likely to wash up on the Indonesian beaches of Sumatra or Java.

Unfortunately, the essence of what ATSB, CSIRO, and Griffin did was to correct an error that had had experts all over the world mumbling to themselves. But the correction was worse than the original error and smelled substantially like it was an excuse to keep searching an area that was statistically unlikely to hold anything as high tech as a Boeing 777-200ER. The way Griffin derived his new drift model, shown above, was by using drogue-on drifters that tap into subsurface currents. Those deep currents have very little to do with surface currents. Water movement in ocean basins is a bit like a seven-layer salad: what you get on top is not what you’re likely to get even one layer down.

I should say that I have exchanged emails with David a few times. Seems like a good guy. Can’t tell too much from a few emails. No reason to doubt his sincerity. 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.

[Having said that, let me be clear that in my view, the horrifically misguided direction this search took from the very beginning was caused almost entirely by Inmarsat. I am not going to suggest it was intentional, but it certainly wasn’t corrected along the way. It is understandable, actually, that ATSB did not unilaterally correct Inmarsat’s botched math. Inmarsat has highly educated engineers; ATSB does not. It was an unfair match.]

I say “influenced” by “internal national politics” with a fair amount of confidence because a drift model prepared by NOAA’s Dr. Rick Lumpkin with the exact same dataset used by CSIRO’s Griffin produced a much different outcome.

And Lumpkin’s results were similar to yet another drift model that is at odds with the CSIRO / ATSB drift model. That one, shown below, was prepared by Germany’s Geomar.


Irrespective of “days elapsed”, the essence of the difference among the various models is this: NOAA and Geomar drift models show that debris hitting Reunion Island and the Mozambique Channel is likely to have originated south of Java Island to the north and east in a large very deep pool of water known as the Wharton Basin. In contrast, the CSIRO drift model suggests debris that reached Reunion Island and the Mozambique Channel had to have originated southwest of Perth: exactly where the Australia-led search is centered. The problem is, there is no empirical support for the CSIRO / ATSB assumption. Nothing drifts from the Perth area to the northwest, except wind. And the wind does not drive debris. That may seem counter-intuitive, but it is the way those complicated currents and forces work in real time.

There is about a 4,000 kilometer north-to-south difference between Wharton Basin and the Geelvinck Fracture area the search has been focused on for two long years. Supposedly, these enormously disparate locations are based on the very same data. Well, something is wrong.

If NOAA wasn’t in agreement with the original Geomar model, things would be messier than they are. But NOAA is the recognized expert on the block. It has been working in the Indian Ocean a long time and keeps survey ships in the area around the clock. It knows the currents, winds, and complexities of that water as well as anyone.

It is only necessary to examine real-time wind and current visualizations to realize that CSIRO’s drift model has problems. A relatively new entity uses the “nullschool dot net” domain and gets its data from NASA’s GEOS-5; the data is classified as experimental, but it tends to be very consistent with traditional visualizations. So let’s take a look at 60-second clip for the southern Indian Ocean. Perhaps this is what CSIRO used as its source:

 

It’s easy to see that the “current” shown in this high-tech model using data from March 25, 2016 moves from the search area southwest of Perth to the Madagascar and Mascarene Island areas. But wait! Something’s wrong with that. It has already been shown that drift does not move from the search area to the northwest. It can’t.

I used a little slight-of-hand with the clip above. It was important to show how nature works in that part of the world. What is depicted in the video clip above is wind current, not ocean water current. So let’s see what happens when we use ocean water current in another visualization.

Much different outcome. These two clips are both correct: one shows wind, the other water. It is what really happens out there. Wind currents frequently move from the southeast to the northwest in the southern Indian Ocean. But ocean currents behave much differently. Most debris flows from the area between Java and Exmouth, Australia (inflow from Timor Sea) to the west or northwest; debris south of Exmouth will slowly drift in circles, eventually being pulled into the circumpolar current that flows west-to-east south of the Australian continent. Debris in the mid-latitude areas between Java and Exmouth invariably drifts toward Madagascar and the Mascarene Islands. But debris in the search area cannot do that because it cannot escape endless eddies west of Australia caused by the Coriolis effect.

But, when debris turned up in the Mozambique Channel in February, and similar debris was then reported dating back to December 2015, CSIRO decided it had to rethink its position. That’s when it came up with this model that does exactly what Geomar did 9 months earlier. But neither CSIRO nor ATSB nor the Australian Prime Minister’s office acknowledged they suddenly realized they were searching the wrong part of the Indian Ocean. In fact, they still insist they are in the right location.


It is fairly clear at this point that Australia will do whatever Australia decides to do. It will not be reasoned with or cajoled into making changes that put the search where Australia doesn’t want it to be.

So, it doesn’t really matter what is or what is likely to be. The search will go on in a part of the Indian Ocean that cannot possibly be hiding a passenger plane.

Nevertheless, there is encouraging recent news. Malaysia has independently indicated that it intends to mount a search for surface debris through the Mozambique Channel and perhaps south of there along the South African coast. That may be the single most important decision since we learned the Reunion Island flaperon definitely came from MH370. So now we wait for Malaysia to lead the search in a more fruitful direction; perhaps with assistance from China.

 
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..
Perhaps post #56 from the NX thread will help explain:  

Clues:

confusion, befuddlement, bewilderment, puzzlement, perplexity, disconcertment, discomposure, daze, fog, muddle, NFI etc ........

The MOAS causes Polly discombobulation (MOAS: Mystique of Aviation Safety) - Ventus made us aware of the condition called Discombobulation - see HERE. 

Now although considered to be a largely Pilot affliction suffered in today's modern high-tech airliner cockpits, I believe this is also a Polly affliction when presented with bureaucratic spin & bulldust in the highly technical world of aviation safety regulation.

The following is an attempt to present an example of how this affliction manifests itself within the walls of APH & how M&M and Co use this to their advantage to maintain the status quo.  

 
It could be that the Turnbull government and it's agencies are privy to some vital cog of information that reinforces their belief that the ATSB SIO search priority area, is indeed correct; or it could be that they are passed the PNR, where to withdraw now is no longer an acceptable alternative - who knows? Still it will be fascinating to see how the government directs the narrative and extricates itself between now and the SIO search conclusion...
MTF...P2