Geological Insights from the Search for Malaysian Airlines flight MH370

A rich trove of marine geophysical data acquired in the search for missing flight MH370 is yielding knowledge of ocean floor processes at a level of detail rare in the deep ocean.

The tragic disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 on 8 March 2014 has led to a deep ocean search effort of unprecedented scale and detail. Between June 2014 and June 2016, state-of-the-art shipboard multibeam echosounder (MBES) and sub-bottom profile data were collected in a ~255,000 km2 zone of the southeastern Indian Ocean. The arcuate, NE-SW oriented search swath (75 to 160 km wide) centers on Broken Ridge and extends ~2500 km from the eastern flank of Batavia Seamount to the Geelvinck Fracture Zone (Figure 1). Aircraft debris found along the shores of the western Indian Ocean is consistent with drift modelling that indicates an origin in the search area ( https://www.atsb.gov.au/mh370/). The resultant dataset constitutes the largest MBES mapping effort for the Indian Ocean, representing about half the size of California, improving spatial resolution of the ocean floor in this region from an average of >5 km2 to <0.1 km2. Importantly, the new data provide the geospatial framework for the current phase of the search – deployment of deep-water, high-resolution acoustic and optical imaging instruments able to identify aircraft wreckage.


<b>Citation:</b> Picard, K.,Brooke, B., and Coffin, M. F. (2017), Geological insights from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 search, <i>Eos</i>, 98, https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO069015. Published on 06 March 2017.

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Date (Creation)
2017-03-08T00:00:00
Date (Publication)
2024-04-18T04:21:45
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Geoscience Australia Persistent Identifier/https://pid.geoscience.gov.au/dataset/ga/112181

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American Geophysical Union (AGU) Publications

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Picard, K.

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Brooke, B.

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Coffin, M.F.

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Eos Journal

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Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

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Place and Communities Division

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Brooke, B.

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Product data repository: Various Formats

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Data Store directory containing one or more files, possibly in a variety of formats, accessible to Geoscience Australia staff only for internal purposes

theme.ANZRC Fields of Research.rdf

  • EARTH SCIENCES

Discipline

  • Marine

Instrument

  • multibeam

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  • seabed

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  • Published_External

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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 International Licence

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CC-BY

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3.0

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

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© 2017. The authors.

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English
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urn:uuid/cc9eb53c-024a-431e-babc-e9ba883ca30d

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GeoNetwork UUID

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Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia)

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Brooke, B.

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Brooke, B.

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Journal Article

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Geoscience Australia - short identifier for metadata record with

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eCatId/112181

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https://internal.ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/search?uuid=cc9eb53c-024a-431e-babc-e9ba883ca30d

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https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/js/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/cc9eb53c-024a-431e-babc-e9ba883ca30d

Date info (Creation)
2017-07-27T07:06:16
Date info (Revision)
2017-07-27T07:17:38

Metadata standard

Title

AU/NZS ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-1:2014

Metadata standard

Title

ISO 19115-3 (Draft Schemas 2015)

Edition date
2015-07-01T00:00:00
Title

Geoscience Australia Community Metadata Profile of ISO 19115-1:2014

Edition

Version 2.0, April 2015

 
 

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Marine multibeam seabed
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EARTH SCIENCES

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