Drift analysis of MH370 debris in the southern Indian Ocean

Abstract

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared on 8 March 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. A flaperon from the flight was found on Reunion Island in July 2015. Two more confirmed pieces of debris were found in Mauritius and Tanzania, and 19 unconfirmed items were found off Mozambique, South Africa, and Madagascar. Drift buoys originating from the designated underwater search area arrived in Reunion Island, Mauritius, and Tanzania. Some of these buoys took a similarly long time as did real debris to reach these destinations, following a heading northeast and then west. For the present study, a maritime object drift prediction model was developed. “High resolution surface currents, Stokes drift, and winds” were processed, and a series of model experiments were constructed. The predicted trajectories of the modeled objects were similar to the observed trajectories of the drift buoys. Many modeled objects drifted northward then westward, ending up in Reunion Island, Mauritius, and Tanzania with probabilities of 5‰, 5‰, and 19‰, respectively. At the end of the simulation, most objects were located near 10°S in the western Indian Ocean. There were significant differences between experiments with different leeway factors, possibly because of the influence of southeast trade winds. The north part of the underwater search area is most likely to be the crash site, because the predicted trajectories of objects originating here are consistent with the many pieces of debris found along the east coast of Africa and the absence of such findings on the west coast of Australia.

Keywords

MH370 / debris / drift trajectory / drift buoys / surface currents / Stokes drift

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFC1404700); National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41430963 and 41606005); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 201713023). Surface drifter data were provided by the Global Drifter Pro-gram. Surface currents data were from Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model developed by Florida State University (HYCOM). Wave data were provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Wind data were provided by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP).

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