Page 39 - Ocean Currents News Today

That missing plane. were waiting on new images released this morning from a french satellite showing a possible object. we have captain dave funk, a retired commercial pilot, live this morning for us in des moines, iowa. shawn henry, formerly with the fbi is still with us. and msnbc aviation andalyst joh cox. gentlemen, thank you all so much for being with us. as we are looking now at possible pieces of debris in the southern indian ocean, even if we locate those pieces of debris, how difficult ...

Of the earth, and good reason. the search area is focusing really on two areas that are about 23,000 square miles. eight aircrafts are searching the area, but it takes them four hours to fly there, leaving them just two to three hours to search the ocean. now, trained spotters who are just using their eyes are searching for debris from the planes, and theyre battling rain, wind and fog. the southern indians ocean is known as the roaring 40s. winds in this area change rapidly and hit 30 to 40 mil...

Because beyond that, the hurdles become extremely high. first, experts will use mathematical models of wind and ocean currents to see how far the debris drifted. when they agree on a general vicinity, sonar buoys can be dropped in to pick up pings from either the black box or the emergency locator transmitters. but the pings can only be detected from a mile away and the batteries, only last 30 days. that means they would send manned or unmanned subs, but the plane could be 12,000 feet deep, abou...

D.c., michael goldfarb, president of mga aviation consulting. thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> what do you make of the latest satellite image, the size and its location? >> i mean, were really grasping as straws here. we have no idea if it is debris. it seems to logically follow the plotting the ntsb did if it ran out of fuel in that particular area and off the other satellite image. have i to tell you, the worst ocean currents in the world, the weather, the resources were putting agai...

These waters and a search this size. >> well, the difficulty in general is connected with how objects disperse in the water. so the the more time goes by, the more the objects spread out and the more difficult it is to find them, which is step one. then step two is to track them back to the site of the presumed crash. so we have a great coverage globally. thats the way which is essentially founded by noaa. what we have here, you can see west of australia we have -- the way we contribute to the o...

Could whatever was spotted by the satellites have drifted by now? >> probably a few miles to hundreds of miles. at this point whoever is coordinating the search operation will have a critical idea of what the possible trajectory would be. >> let me follow-up on this quickly. you said that its possible that in four days it could have drifted hundreds of miles. is it possible that considering there were some objects seen on the 16th by australian satellites that on the 18th this could be the same,...

The day. we have to keep in mind that there are searchers all over the indian ocean. as we head to the extreme north, we have a tropical cyclone. we have gillian. winds of 65 miles an hour and expected to intensify in the next 48 hours. i want to mention the ocean currents. we have some very strong ocean currents. we have talked about the australian current. it moves one foot per second. if these objects get into that west australian current, guys, it will be hard to get to it because it moves q...

Quote, a mistake. the family members of the passengers here in beijing are not reacting to the latest images. they are being cautious. they have gone through so many ups and downs emotionally, they want concrete facts before they can focus on the next step. >> our thanks to pauline who has been in beijing for the emotional swings. these new images captured by a chinese satellite were taken days ago. it takes days to analyze them. the debris could be pulled quite a ways away by now. jennifer, wha...

Way we contribute to the operation is bee providing real time data of atmospheric pressure and then ocean currents that can be used to validate the models. >> so that the buoy we saw you drop at the top of the show, is that feeding information back to that computer now? >> its feeding information in real time to anyone who is capable of assimilating the data. so all the weather centers, all the operational centers, the u.s. navy, australian navy, they all are capable of reading our data and usin...

Signal has to go very far. >> and you are talking about the thousands of square miles and you cant drop it in and drive around and that is the importance to find the wreckage which is 16 days later, and then extrapolate as to where the wreckage is to hit the water. >> yes, and working with the ocean currents to keep it moving if it does not sink all of the way. remember with the air france that went down in the ocean, it took them two years to find that black box and in that amount of time it ha...