[Peetwo]

The following is a link for the DPWG (MH370) presentation by CSIRO's David Griffin - Operational Drift Forecast Modelling in Support of the AMSA Search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 - at the Forum for Operational Oceanography held at Fremantle in July 2015.

{P2 comment: I find it passing strange that David Griffin & his associates in the heading for this presentation call it the "AMSA Search for..." , I guess it is because the SLDMB & global drifter collated information is only listed from 30 March till 14 April 2014. Why so limited for a presentation made over a year later?}  

Being a layman on such things but having a keen interest to understand the Science, theoretical or otherwise, behind the huge endeavour to crack the tragic disappearance of MH370, I found the presentation easy to follow and informative, especially in regards to the SLDMB model verification (pg 16-21).

[b]Pg16 - SLDMB model verification[/b]

• Used to ground truth the known complex oceanic currents
  
  
• SLDMBs – to assist in determination of best data set
  
  
• Deploy in advance of proposed move of search area
  
  
• 33 x SLDMB’s successfully deployed to validate drift modelling
  
  
• Comparisons run against all three oceanic current data sets to provide information as to the highest performing data set
   
   
  Pg 21- Summary
  
  
• [b]Complex environment, very complex scenario
  [/b]
  
• [b]Best practice combined and consensus forecasting was applied to consider more variability than any one single model could represent
  [/b]
  
• [b]Consensus forecasting was used to present numerous different outcomes and determine where these coincided
  [/b]
  
• [b]Model performance was evaluated throughout the incident, using SLDMB drifters
  [/b]
  
• [b]Comparisons using SLDMB drifters allow for a model skill assessment to be built up over time
  [/b]
  
• [b]Skill assessment may allow for potential weighting of the consensus forecast to improve results [/b]
  

Over on the PT blog - http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/.../#comments - & in between Gunson & Fred sniping at each other I again asked the question on why it was more of these SLDMBs were not strategically deployed:

22
PAIN_P2
Posted February 6, 2016 at 8:19 am | Permalink

“..SLDMB drift buoys were tracked by CSIRO and the results have been published..”

Yes but there was only 33: Ref pg 16-21 here – http://www.foo.org.au/fileadmin/user_upl...ressed.pdf

My point is that the whole of the 7th arc should have been saturated with them, both drogue & submerged versions.

Also all of the best guess-timates for location on the arc or elsewhere should have automatically had SLDMBs deployed, small price to pay out of a pretty big bucket.

23
Dan Dair
Posted February 6, 2016 at 10:34 am | Permalink

PAIN_P2,
I agree completely.

It would have been really nice if anyone had mentioned it at the time…..
at least, anyone of influence.!

Maybe it was because of the 'global' drifters providing supplemental information but I still feel an opportunity was missed and is still missed anytime further refinement is made by the JACC SSWG & independent experts of the theorised priority search areas - just saying


MTF...P2