[Peetwo]

MH370 DOI & Hoodlum update - 29/07/16

From the latest by NewsCorp's Robin Ironside (via news.com.au), it would appear that ATSB CC Greg Hood is indeed attempting to taking control of the MH370 narrative - good luck with that Hoody...

 It would also seem that the selfie & tweep fiend DDD Darren is back - God help us! :  

Wing part may hold crucial clues as to MH370’s final moment
July 29, 2016 6:50pm


[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/news/content/v2/origin:video_integrator.5vd2NhNDE6-p0qNys2qJ2dAR3SIQIX43?t_product=video&t_template=../video/player[/img]

The 120,000 square kilometre search zone in the southern Indian Ocean. Picture: ATSB

Robyn Ironside - News Corp Australia Network

A WING part found on the shores of Tanzania in East Africa has been determined as “highly likely” to have come from MH370, and could provide further clues as to how the plane entered the water.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau Chief Commissioner Greg Hood said after examination by experts, it was clear the wing part was definitely from a Boeing 777.

Federal transport minister Darren Chester said analysis would continue to assess what other information could be gleaned from the debris.


Helpful. A wing part considered ‘highly likely’ to have come from MH370. Picture: AFP/ATSBSource:AFP

It is the sixth piece of debris declared as either certain or almost certain to have come from the missing Malaysia Airlines’ flight.

The wing part is also the largest piece of debris found to date.

Commissioner Hood said he was hopeful further analysis of the wing part could reveal whether it had been deployed for landing or was retracted when it separated from the plane.

He said that information could shed more light on how the plane entered the southern Indian Ocean.

The ATSB has long worked on a theory the Boeing 777 ran out of fuel and then plunged into the sea — but other experts have claimed it could have been manually glided into the ocean to minimise damage and make it harder to find.

“We’ve got no evidence either way to say there was somebody at the controls (when it hit the water),” Commissioner Hood said.


Close inspection. A wing part found in Tanzania is inspected by ATSB experts. Picture: AFP/ATSBSource:AFP

Barnacles from the wing part would also be examined to try to determine how long it had been in the water.

Oceanographers have said the discovery of the item in Tanzania was a further indication the plane’s most likely final resting place was north of the current search zone.

Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi of the University of Western Australia said based purely on oceanography, the crash site seemed more likely to be between 28 and 33 degrees south of the Equator.

The current search zone is between 32 and 35 degrees south.

Drift modelling by Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi from the University of WA shows the likelihood of MH370 debris turning up in eastern Africa and even Australia over the two years since the plane’s disappearance.

Mr Chester said the underwater search for MH370 was expected to be finalised by December.

“We remain hopeful that the aircraft will be located in the remaining search area,” Mr Chester said.

“As agreed by Ministers from Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China and Australia at the tripartite meeting on 22 July 2016, in the event that the aircraft is not located in the current area, the search for MH370 will be suspended on the completion of the 120,000 square kilometre high priority search area unless credible new evidence about the specific location of the aircraft emerges.”

&..from Live Science online:

Missing Flight MH370: Ocean Currents Point to New Search Spot
By Charitha Pattiaratchi, University of Western Australia, and Sarath Wijeratne, University of Western Australia | July 28, 2016 08:22am ET




Missing flight MH370 is somewhere out in the ocean. But where is the best place to search in the Indian Ocean?
Credit: Iakov Kalinin / Shutterstock.com

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is one of the greatest mysteries in aviation. Costing A$180 million, the search of the seabed to locate the crash site is also one of the most expensive.

But after almost 28 months since its disappearance, the exact crash location has still not been found.

The Australian government, with help from experts from Malaysia and China, has been coordinating the search effort over a 120,000 square kilometre area of the Indian Ocean, off Western Australia.

With just 10,000 square kilometres still to be searched, senior ministers from the three countries met earlier this month to consider what to do if they find nothing.

The current plan is to suspend the search – not abandon it – in case any “credible new information” should emerge that could be used to identify the specific location of the aircraft.

What do we know so far

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, to Beijing, in China, with 239 passengers and crew on board. For reasons that are still unknown, the aircraft diverted from its scheduled flight path.

The main evidence on the flight path of the aircraft was provided through satellite data obtained from Inmarsat, which indicated that the plane most likely ended up in the southeast Indian Ocean.

Analysis of a series of seven acoustic “pings”, originating from the aircraft engines, showed the likely location of the plane was along an arc that allowed for an equidistance between the plane and the satellite.

The last of the seven pings was received at 00.19 UTC and the location of this arc – the 7th arc – is the basis for defining the search areas by the Australian Air Transport Safety Board (ATSB).


Location of the 7th Arc and the origin of debris locations.
Credit: Google Earth

The oceans around the potential crash area were extensively searched using ships and aircraft in the days and weeks after March 18 2014, but they failed to identify any surface debris.

The aircraft debris

On July 29 2015, more than 16 months after the flight disappeared, a section of a wing – a flaperon – washed up on Reunion Island in the eastern Indian Ocean. This was later confirmed as originating from the MH370 aircraft.

We actually predicted this discovery using an oceanographic drift model 12 months in advance.

Subsequent to finding of the flaperon on Reunion Island, additional pieces of debris have been found in the eastern Indian Ocean along the shorelines of Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar and Tanzania. These, too, are consistent with our drift modelling predictions.

In addition, the discoveries by US lawyer and amateur investigator Blaine Gibson were facilitated by the model predictions we made.

There are many clues that a knowledge of the oceanographic processes and drift modelling provide to this mystery.

First, due to the prevailing surface wind patterns, each of the ocean basins consists of a large gyre, which is a large system of circular ocean currents, and in the southern Indian Ocean it moves in an anticlockwise direction.

This means any debris originating in the southeast Indian ocean will initially be transported northwards, then joining the strong east-to-west current, the south equatorial current to the western Indian Ocean.



Pathways of debris to 28 July, 2015, originating from the southern Indian Ocean indicating the the presence of the anticlockwise southern Indian Ocean gyre.
Credit: The Conversation
 
Second, oceanographic drift models simulate the pathways of debris under the action of ocean currents, winds and waves to identify regions where the debris may ultimately make landfall.

These models can also provide timescales for the debris to travel to the western Indian Ocean and this is one of the aspects investigated through our simulations. 
 
Tracking possible debris paths

We used the surface currents predicted by the HYCOM global ocean model as input to a particle tracking model to track debris over a 16-24 month period to coincide with the finding of the flaperon on Reunion Island.

The origin of the debris was specified along the 7th arc at 25 different locations (see top image) extending from the south (-39.258298°S 87.515653°E) to north (-22.815421°S 103.829706°E). For each model run, 50,000 particles were released and tracked over the period March 8 2014, to July 28 2015.

The results indicated that if the debris originated from the southern most location (LOC01 in the top image), the debris would not have reached Reunion Island by July 28 2015 (below).


Pathways of debris to July 28 2015, originating from the southernmost location along the 7th arc.

In fact, the debris would not have passed the 60°E longitude; Reunion Island is at 55°E. In contrast, if the debris originated from the northernmost location (LOC25 in the top image), the debris would have arrived at Reunion Island before March 30 2014, some four months prior to the discovery of the flaperon (below).


Pathways of debris to July 28 2015, originating from the northernmost location along the 7th arc.
 
These results are consistent with the finding of the debris in the western Indian Ocean and originating from the 7th arc, but the travel times differ by several months depending on the origin of the debris along the 7th arc.

By examining the time at which the flaperon was found in Reunion Island, the model results may guide us to narrow the locations along the the 7th arc.


Pathways of debris to July 28 2015, originating from location 11 along the 7th arc.
 
Debris pathways originating from location 11 (LOC11 in the top image) indicated that by July 28 2016, the a first few particles (i.e. the fastest pathway) would have reached Reunion Island (below).

Debris pathways originating from location 18 (LOC18 in the top image) indicated that by July 28 2015, the majority of particles in the time interval would have passed Reunion Island (below).


Pathways of debris to July 28 2015, originating from location 18 along the 7th arc.

These results from the oceanographic drift modelling indicate that in terms of the timescales involved in the transport of the debris to Reunion Island the most likely location for the origin would be between locations 11 (33.171678°S, 96.294832°E) and 18 (28.297439°S, 100.503580°E).

These results are consistent with recent predictions by an independent Italian group using similar modelling techniques.

So where to search next?

The location of the possible crash site identified through the drift modelling presented here are located to the north of the current sea bed search area.

The current status of the search is that once the current targeted area has been completed, the search is to be suspended. This would allow for careful reflection and review of the different data sources as well as results from the sea bed mapping.

Results of the oceanographic drift modelling indicate that if a new search is to be conducted, then a priority region to target would be the area between 33°S and 28°S along the 7th arc.

Charitha Pattiaratchi, Professor of Coastal Oceanography, University of Western Australia and Sarath Wijeratne, Research Assistant Professor, UWA Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

         



MTF...P2