By MPat
(Note: A comment by reader Lauren H brought my attention to an analysis I’d overlooked by reader MPat. As Lauren H points out, it’s as timely now as it was when MPat first aired it back in March. — JW)
The potential arrival of more debris in the East African region is triggering interest once more in the currents and drift patterns in the SIO. To sense check the concept that debris could drift from the current search area to these regions I did a little research of my own, the premise being that the observed behaviour of real floating objects (and I am considering of course the buoys of the Global Drifter Program) should be a useful indicator of possible drift pathways, as a counterpoint to cell-based drift simulation models (which may be calibrated to high level drifter behaviour but typically lack the resolution to reproduce drifter movement in detail).
The full drifter database contains meta-data and trajectories for almost 19800 buoys worldwide (some 1400 are currently active). The meta-data includes timing of drogue loss, and a ‘death’ code to categorise the end of life status of buoys that cease transmitting. It is clear from this that drogues are typically lost in a surprisingly short timeframe. It is also notable that only 20% of all the buoys have ended their lives by running aground, with 66% simply ceasing transmission for undocumented reasons.
I have filtered out buoys that have at any time in their lives passed through the locality of the current search zone, based on a rectangle bounded by longitudes 88 to 96 degrees and latitudes -32 to -39 degrees. None were present in this area at the time of the crash, but I consider in any case all buoys that have ever been in this location (dates range from 1995 to 2014). There are 177 in this category. Of these, 39 are listed as having subsequently run aground. The locations at which they washed up are shown in the plot above.
Of the 39, 31 beached on East African coastlines, only 7 in Western Australia, and 1 in Sumatra. An example of 3 randomly chosen trajectories from the 31 that drifted west are shown below together with the box defining search locality :
The average time for buoys to reach their western beaching point after leaving the search box is 534 days (~ 18 months) with minimum 234 days (~ 8 months) and maximum 1263 days (~ 42 months). All but 3 were un-drogued during this journey, and those 3 lost their drogues en-route. For those arriving in Western Australia, the average time to beach was 362 days, with minimum 79 days and maximum 513 days.
If we relax the criterion that the buoys must end by running aground, and simply look at the locations where they eventually stopped transmitting after leaving the search area, we see the following three plots which display the 54 buoys that ended up west of longitude 55 deg (the longitude of Reunion Island),
the 12 that ended east of longitude 109 deg (coast of Western Australia),
and the 111 that remained in between:
Clearly the transport qualities of the ocean currents and weather systems will vary from month to month and year to year. It is also not clear how representative the buoys would be of the drift characteristics of floating debris resulting from a crashed aircraft. Neverthless I believe it is reasonable to propose from the buoy behaviour noted above across a 20 year drifting history that :
i) there is a strong tendency for objects that have been present in the current search area to remain trapped in the mid ocean gyre over extended periods
ii) a proportion, perhaps as high as 10% of robustly floating debris, might be expected to make landfall within 18 months of the crash
iii) the vast majority of the debris making landfall is likely to do so across the coastlines and islands of eastern Africa, with relatively little beaching in Australia.
For what it is worth, I have more background and analysis in a write-up that I hope to post soon.
Please also note that a vastly more expert analysis of drifter behaviour has been performed in October last year by David Griffin of CSIRO, in which he uses composite drifter trajectories to infer a likelihood function for where the MH370 flaperon may have originated. This is well worth a read.
UPDATE 79/2016: Reader Richard Cole has posted a link to a .kml file that shows the trajectories of the drifters that reached Australia. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like if you drop the file into Google Earth. Interesting to note that the greater part of the debris winds up on the southern coast and Tasmania rather than the western coast.
In my theory any public statement by the US Governmemt and it’s investigative agencies on MH370 is suspect since in my theory their the ones who did the hijacking.
I say they were trying to frame Zaharie and the whole story is bogus.fabricated nicely by the CIA and given to the FBI to annouce publicy to mislead us.
@Ken S.
In addition the US is responsible for global warming, starving children in India, the French loss to Portugal, and Brexit.
You are truly pathetic. Opinions with no basis whatsoever.
Fig. 4.2 of “Bayesian Methods” shows speed and heading derived from primary radar data. Apparently the airplane was flown on autopilot until IGARI and after passing Penang, but autopilot was off between IGARI and Penang.
What does that tell us about the person who was controlling the plane?
@Ken.
I think you raise some very interesting points. 20 Freescale employees all on the same flight? How and why on earth would that happen?
A commercial pilot flies to the middle of the SIO to commit suicide — bologna. The only imo flies there is because the pilots are incapacitated, or they are led to believe they are flying somewhere else and inadvertently become co-conspirators, or the plane was remotely hijacked.
Sorry. The only way a plane flies there IMO is because …
Nice explanation regarding basics of Bayesian search theory
http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/geek-week-conditional-probabilities-mh370/
@All
Was the cargo manifest ever completely published?
@DennisW
I would like to add your insulting and devaluating behavior does not affect me.
I know this is often a sign of weakness certain people fall back on when there imagined superiority becomes threatened by thoughts that cast doubt in their own believe system.
That’s why you spent a whole article on the subject on your blog. Not to convince others but to convince yourself. Otherwise you would not feel the need to spent the time on it or to react the way you did.
I’ll wait and see if you’re man enough to admitt it when it turns out your comprehension of the difference between (GEOMAR)reverse and (M Pat/Griffin)forward drift studies on actual or virtual pieces of debris in their outcomes and usefullness in predicting more precize crash areas is wrong.
@Dennis
What is pathetic are idiots who can’t see anying else is possible beyond the math and believe only what the officials tell them.
I think you should just shut up and pass the microphone onto someone else and stop being a condescending jerk on this forum. You are doing nothing to help forward thoughtful and intelligent discussion.
It’s you who is pathetic here.
Ponderously pruning the GE .kml file, to retain only buoys with unambiguous westward drift towards Africa, favors no particular part of the initial buoy box. Whereas all buoys to reach Australia originated from the southern edge of the initial box, conversely buoys can begin anywhere within the box and still reach Africa. If so, African finds give no indication of initial insertion point, whereas lack of finds in Australia prima facie implies an initial insertion point north of 36S.
@DennisW
You have shown great patience…I salute you…
This might be why you can’t make headway arguing with some on this forum.
http://time.com/3997033/conspiracy-theories/
@Ken S: As I said, as the subsea search winds down, my prediction is that ultimately there will be two camps: Those that believe the pilot hijacked MH370, and those that believe the pilot is being framed. Those in the first camp will cite the complexity of fabricating the evidence and maintaining silence. Those in the second camp will claim that there is no good reason for a pilot to intentionally fly to the SIO. Based on the evidence I am aware of, I am in the first camp, i.e., I believe the pilot hijacked MH370, even though it conflicts with my understanding of human behavior.
@PatM
I agree Pat, the hypoxia theory makes more sense to me than the pilot suicide theory which seems to go against human phycology as Jeff has pointed out on earlier posts.
@VictorI
Yes there seems to be two schools of thought on this and both seem to have valid arguements. I of course am in the sexond camp, pilot is being framed.
@Ken S: If we begin to converge on these two possibilities, I think we have made progress.
@VictorI: Obviously, both theories are ‘bologna’. Fortunately, there are more possibilities.
If the truth ever comes out, it will be something that nobody has thought about. It’s a waste of time to speculate and argue about it.
@Erik Nelson
Nice to see you come to the same conclusion as me regarding the Australian trajectories.
And good to read you managed to differentiate all the buoys that landed on Africa are randomly disperged in the box.
The crucial point here is all the Australian buoys passed south of 36S dividing the current search area more or less in two halfs. Ruling out the southern half as a crash area under 36S and with it all scenarios that go more south than this latitude (based on this model!).
I managed to seperate the most northern buoy trajectory around 36S.
It’s also the one that landed most northernly on the coast of WA near Shark Bay.
This also leaves open the possibility debris landed in WA but far north between ~Shark Bay area and Exmouth. IMO this would be a priority zone to look for debris in WA.
But it’s a pity this is particulary the most desolated, inaccessible, inhospitable shoreline on the whole WA coast.
Maybe Blaine Gibson gets inspired? 😉
I would like to see hard evidence of zaharie’s suicide rather than assumed guilt placed on him by a process of elimination.
n.b. Carnarvon might be a good place to start for alerting people looking for debris.
@Ge Rijn
I can’t get GE to save my work, but I whittled down the trajectories, to only those that actually reached Reunion, Mauritius, Madagascar, Africa, or between Madagascar & Africa.
Most of those trajectories started in the NW & SE corner of the beginning buoy box, i.e. well off the 7th arc, way inside to the NW, or outside to the SE.
Of all buoys which reached the western Indian Ocean, by July 2015, and begin on/near the 7th arc, from the SW to NE corners of the beginning box…
3 started near 38-39S…
1 started near 36S…
1 started near 32S…
If we exclude the first three, on the grounds that other debris would have run aground along the coasts of Australia…
And if we doubt 32S b/c that area was heavily searched by air during the first month, per Dr. Duncan Steel’s blog post…
Then 36S is the one known data point consistent with starting on the 7th arc and rapidly reaching the far western Indian Ocean.
One data point does not make a statistically-sound population, yet it is basically consistent with Inmarsat’s best-fitting candidate flight path (to ~35S) at ~450kts, and does fall in between the early air search areas, in the gap identified by Dr. Duncan Steel, extending from 34.5S to 37S.
So something like 450-460kts to 35-36S might be one of the best speculations so far 🙂
MH
Yes, if there was something in his medical history to indicate he may have. been suffering from severe depression, like the German Wings pilot, then I would be more inclined to believe the pilot suicide theory. So far we have seen nothing in his past to indicate this.
Captain Zaharie had no part in it, voluntarily or involuntariy. He would have turned the heading selector on the Mode Control Panel to select the reciprocal heading, the plane would have turned to the selected heading at 25 degrees of bank, there would have been no change in Mach or altitude.
MH
Yes, If there was something in his medical history that indicated he was suffering from severe depression, like the German Wings pilot, then I would be more inclined to believe the pilot suicide theory but I see nothing in his past to indicate he was suffering from any form of depression.
@jeff
although already decided to go out, its impossible to listen and not to comment something; I am realizing huge waste of time and energy spent on rants and shoutings of some guys here, so I feel need to help defend @DennisW as he is for sure technically briliant, uses common sense and balance of math/science vs human approach
@Ken S
please, calm down your personality and attacks on US government; the Freescale (now dutch NXP) simply does regular electronics; these days almost everything you want you can buy on digikey/mouser/farnell and as one crazy theory told that reason for hijack was Freescale enginerss because of Kinetis microcontroller – its nonsense, as its regular, yet very small, ARM Cortex-M0, something to control tamagochi or may by toy quadrucopter, or perhaps even Moon landing module, with proper interfaces; but its nothing special, no miracles; for military drones is probably most import the dedicated low latency communication link over satellites, but as DennisW told, its onla sligtly bigger digital RC plane wth global reach; no way to capture few ASIC guys – everybody builds custom embedded parts from synthesizeable IP designs of ARM (fabless company); there are no secrets; what is prohibited are for example spread spectrum communications on VHF/HF, dedicated to military, but I see no reason to do some stupid hijack – as Gysbreght told, easy way is to simply BUY whole company with all IP too; AND … today, there is NO global war threat between countries/governemnts, simply NOTHING … all what is happening are media clashes (and media are here for US only, for the regular people; somebody transmits, we receive…); governments are completelly OK and working together, but whats problem are peoples minds … huge amount of coldwar-inertial stupidity on ALL sides; misused by some very bad guys to serve their private interests, mostly the money making on the grey and black markets; people, guns, wars…
@Ge Rijn
please, calm down your personality and attacks on DennisW; everything I see here is your occasional aggresivity in case somebody doesnt agree with you or if some credits can be taken by someone else; you are not here to win some game WHO finds the lost plane; thats not the purpose; and BTW, I seriously doubt that anybody here is capable to find or help to find the plane without direct access to debris found (if it is real) and all the info which ATSB, NTSB, FBI, etc professinals can access to; its the same as any amateurs cant build military drone network, which noted Ken S; so arrogance and selfish approach and narcisism is waste of time here too
@boeing
its really unfair you was banned from 100 planes for Iran deal as its true that Airbus did it already and uses lot of US parts too; its stupid hypocrisy and another coldwar-mindset example
this was what I posted but was deleted as waste of time; I dont think so…
https://twitter.com/Space_Station
@falken
I am not talking about Freescale’s consumer electronic products that they make for commercial drones. I am talking about the technology they make for the US DoD drones which is not available on DigiKey.
The US drone network relies on encrypted satellite signals to control their drones. The last thing they would want is a foreign Government getting their hands on technology that could help them hack into this network and control or disable military drones.
The Chinese are willing to pay big bucks to steal such technology and the US considers the theft of such technology a significant threat to their National Security
Read this article.
http://touch.sun-sentinel.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84805023/
@Gysbreght: The FBI is leaking information that coordinates in the SIO were found on the pilot’s computer. Either the FBI believes the pilot is responsible, or the FBI is framing the pilot. I believe the former. If the criminal investigators suspect the pilot, I don’t think Malaysia would readily disclose this.
I agree that it is pointless to argue about this.
@Victorl
I think it’s still difficult dividing in two camps. Important to me is consensus is growing it must have been a human controlled flight till the end or at least till some time after FMT.
It still could have been a flight in which Zahari and Hamid were ordered to shut all communications down and fly to Australia evading/misleading as good as possible Malasian radar and Indonesian radar and airspace.
It could have been he was ordered to fly to Perth but knew he probably couldn’t make it and was forced to dith the plane as good as possible when he ran out of fuel.
Just as stupid as that.
Just as stupid as those hijackers that forced Ethiopian flight 961 to fly to Australia and the pilot knew he could not reach it but could not convince his hijackers with the partly failed ditching and fatalities as a result.
But pilot suicides and their motives are as incomprehensible as the most sophisticated conspiracy theory on the other hand.
Look at the Germanwings pilot. He planned his suicide calculated well before. He even rehearsed the descent on a flight before in reality.
Speculating on motive in the case of suicide (and taking with you hundrerds of other lives) is incomprehensible for normal thinking humans for those pilots are not normal thinking humans anymore.
And therefore instinctively ruled out as a possible possibility in the first place.
@VictorI: Apparently you believe your sources.
Captain Shah loved flying. He constructed an elaborate simulator.
Do people expect, that he would practice flying… routine runs from KL to Beijing over & over ?
Or, when all of the rest of us watch Bond & Bourne movies for some excitement in our lives, might he have tried some exciting maneuvers landing in lush tropical locales ?
I honestly don’t know, but do most owners of sophisticated flight sim programs, actually sit at their computers, flying simulated international mail, on cargo runs along well-known air routes… or don’t they ever try anything more exciting & extraordinary ?
How many such sim program owners would feel incriminated, if trying out out-of-the-ordinary, more-exciting-than-usual-regular-normal, were deemed suspicious ?
Shah lived in SEA, practiced exciting flying in and around SEA, was on an airplane with some emergency in SEA, which plane wound up turning back towards SEA, and probably crashed in that same general region on the globe…
“The guy liked flying & wanted to practice, on off time, what he did NOT do on the job” seems perfectly plausible to me. Maybe don’t make “challenger deeps out of shallow broken ridges” ??
@Ken S.
I am actively working on the theory that MH370 was simply collateral damage in the ongoing global war between the anti-vaxxers and big pharma. Big pharma is much more capable of atrocities than the US government. Stay tuned.
The article you are fond of linking is not about big bucks for secrets. In fact the $50M number is below what the US government pays for a Reaper, $64M. The Chinese were simply bargain hunting not looking for secrets.
@falken
I respect your honesty and enjoy your sometimes outlandisch approuch (as you know).
And in a way you are right. I’m not the kind of guy that sits back as others trying to devaluate me, insult me or trying to take credit of something I suggested earlier.
You can call that narcisstic. I would call it standing up for myself and explaining my thoughts with arguments and thoughtfull -sometimes maybe confronting- opinions.
I don’t fall back on calling people ‘whackos’ and ‘dumb’ if I don’t know how to argue anymore.
I don’t know how well you are in to this but the last mentioned behaviour is a DSM4 narcissistic trait.
And to me it’s surely not a competition.
I am totaly willing to ajust my opinions and views if credible new information and evidence shows up. And not at all reluctant to give credit to people who bring new information and evidence in. I think I showed that several times before. And when I was wrong did not hesitate to admitt it.
And that’s what I’m prepared to do anytime.
Hope you stay on.
@DennisW
Great Dennis, can’t wait to read it. (rolls eyes)
ahhh @DennisW… so the secret “hot sauce” we been looking for is the naturopathic fermenting mangosteens that can displace much of the big pharma meds??? nb: poking at big pharma rather than your idea ….
@Gysbreght: When multiple sources release similar information, I take notice. I first began to take this story seriously after some exchanges with Miles O’Brien. I stand by my prediction about convergence towards two narratives.
@Susie Crowe
I don’t get the impression that the ATSB search strategy itself is Bayesian. While it is true that the DTSG analysis used Bayesian methods to define a probabilistic search area, it would appear to me that the search area has been defined, and is being methodically scanned without using Bayesian methods to actively modify the area being searched. I could certainly be wrong about that.
@VictorI: “When multiple sources release similar information, I take notice.”
When multiple sources release similar information, they usually picked up the same rumour.
@Gysbreght: Your disagreement with my prediction is duly noted. I guess we’ll just have to wait.
@Erik Nelson
I think you made a sound analitics based on this model. As I said before the current search box cannot be ruled out above 36S due to the absence of debris finds in Australia and Sumatra/Java (yet;) and for it’s not searched completly yet and there is still the possibility of debris finds in Australia (Sumatra/Java) although not likely anymore.
But if the plane does not get found in the current search area it becomes more problematic.
Then there are two possibilities left IMO:
-it must have glided outside the current search area somewhere between 32S and 36S or
-it crashed/ditched north of 32S somewhere along the 7th arc but not too far north due to no debris finds on Indonesian shores.
I think in this regard the post and link of @oriondt on 10 july 9.40PM page 3 could be quite important.
It’s well worth to take a look at those pictures IMO.
It seems overlooked as the M Pat post in march till now…
I hope Jeff Wise took notice of it allready.
@falken
In regard of my previous post to you I like to mention that the IG group by name of Mike Exner (@airlandseaman) and Don Thompson had the desency of putting my name under their public report on the Pembla piece.
To me that shows charactar without arrogance.
Does anyone know how many links we are allowed to put into one post? I have tried posting in my previous posts multiple links (4) and it did not seem to work. Is there a restrcition on this in this forum?
@falken
Something outlandish and off topic for you.
It’s something about nameless heads in nameless frames, like so many.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVprz0nm0Y4
@kenS. Yes if you put in more than one link it put the post for review.
@DennisW
Hi Dennis. Look on the bright side, at least the stock market had bounced back! Would you believe, I actually felt guilty about that, being British, I mean.
MH Thank You
@falken
And that night on the 7/8th of march 2014 was a starry starry night.
Maybe the tune was in his head.. 😉
@ROB
Spot on there. Events like Brexit are useful for testing the structure of one’s portfolio. Being a disciple of Taleb, I have tried to achieve a portfolio “beta” of around 0.4. The Brexit event showed that I was very close to that value.
As I mentioned previously, the Brexit event also showed the inherent weakness (over-weighting priors) of Bayesian prediction as did the Trump primary results. Punters (book makers for the non-Brits on this thread), are generally regarded as very reliable by economists, and the punters are solidly in the Bayes camp. The frequentists got it right in both cases.
@Ge Rijn, Please don’t post off-topic links, especially without saying what they are.
@DennisW
I hear what you say, but I’m not going to get into an argument about the validity of the Bayesian analysis. You know my views on the subject, anyway. We will just have to see how things pan out. What we need is a bull market now.
@DennisW
Thanks for questioning the accuracy of information from that link.
My intent was more a Bayesian “for dummies” offering, but do not want to incorporate misinformation. I have sent an email to the gentleman who wrote the piece with a request to verify or correct the statement;
“The technique that’s being used for the search for MH370 is called Bayesian search theory.”
FWIW…I think your pragmatism and intellect, combined with your experience and wisdom, are a great contribution and asset here in the last 2+ years.
Thank you, Susie.
I think the most compelling use of Bayes theorem directly relevant to us is in the medical domain where certain diagnostics such a mammograms are now being greatly curtailed. An evaluation of detection failures and false positives combined with the inherent probability of the condition have shown many diagnostics are simply not sensible.