Are Anomalous Fires on N. Sentinel Island Associated with Flight MH 370?

On March 8th, sometime between 12 and 15 hours after the Boeing 777 disappeared from secondary radar, a very distinct plume of smoke appeared on MODIS imagery from the north side of North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territories of India. The island is solely occupied by an indigenous people known as the Sentinelese who have categorically rejected almost all contact with the outside world. Except for a series of friendly visits in the 1990′s from Dr. Trilokinath Pandit of the Anthropological Survey of India, they have greeted all outsiders with a hail of arrows. In 1981 they forced a hasty evacuation from a grounded cargo vessel you can still see in Google Maps, and  they launched arrows at a helicopter checking to see if they survived the 2004 Tsunami. Scanning the island, it is clear the island shows no evidence of agriculture, only sand beaches and dense tropical forest canopy. Anthropologists report they are technically a stone age tribe (though the use repurposed bits of metal from shipwrecks) and while they posses fire, they did not know how to make it.

So back to the modern era. At 4:30 GMT, NASA’s Terra satellite recorded, as always, a quiet, smokeless image of the remote island. But a mere 3 hours later, when Aqua passed overhead at 7:35 GMT, the satellite captured this image of a distinct smoke plume.

The following day, Landsat 8 acquired an image of the island, and while no smoke was visible, a roughly 40 hectare (over 123 acre) burn scar cuts into the dense interior canopy of the island. Below you can scroll between a reference image from February 5th (on the right) and the Landsat 8 image acquired on March 9 (on the left).

This is a false-color (Bands 7-5-1) contrast-enhanced image, which exaggerates the reflectance of light in the near-infrared wavelengths so that healthy vegetation appears exceptionally green, while burn scars and bare earth or sand appear reddish-orange. 

Finally, infrared sensors aboard the MODIS satellites and NOAA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite have detected fires on the north side of this island from March 8-10. According to our review of the past three months and March 2013, satellites have never before detected fires of this magnitude on North Sentinel Island.

So what is going on? Well there are a few possibilities, but nothing concrete…

Could this be connected to the disappearance of MH 370?  Indian Naval officials dismissed earlier reports of the smoke from the island, saying it was just the natives burning grassland. Except there is no grassland on the island… 

Could this isolated tribe have reached the anthropological milestone or experimenting with slash-and-burn agriculture? Possible, but why now?

Or perhaps the fires were completely accidental, set off by lightning or an out of control campfire. But we’re looking at dense tropical island jungle and it’s hard to imagine over 120 acres just accidentally burns up.

We’re looking into this, including trying to access a global lightning strike database so we can determine if the fire was associated with a brief but intense weather event.  But please let us know what you think in the comments below. 

Don’t forget, you can check out the same imagery we use from the USGS, NASA, and NOAA, and if you are in a position to pass this along to administrators or Search & Rescue teams who can do something with this imagery, please do so!