@SLFgeek;
Just a reminder!
In June 2010 [a year after the loss of AF447], the BEA deployed 9 Iridium/GPS surface drifters with Davis drogues in a regular grid pattern within 40 nautical miles of the LKP of AF447. Eight of these drifters showed that the surface circulation patterns in June, even though for a different year, varied significantly in space and time.
The outcome proved that it was not possible to use either climatic flow field or fields in different years to determine the possible location of the aircraft on the sea floor. What happened in practice, was that the data obtained was used to refine the Finite-Volume, Community Ocean Model (FVCOM) that had been developed by Changsheng Chen of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth (UMASSD) and updated for use in the AF447 search in collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), MA.
The FVCOM model is driven by physical properties such as, accurate meteorological forcing (winds, air-pressure, and heat flux, etc), resolving meso-scale variability of the sea surface elevation (or sea surface height-SSH), and capture of the spatial and temporal structures of the surface mixed layers.
Sounds complex, and it is; bearing in mind that the backtracking involved bodies over very much smaller distances and time scale than the MH370 scenario.
Last edited by mm43; 3rd Aug 2015 at 03:31.