Intercomparison of In-Flight Icing Algorithms. Part I: WISP94 Real-Time Icing Prediction and Evaluation Program

Abstract

The purpose of the Federal Aviation Administration?s Icing Forecasting Improvement Program is to conduct research on icing conditions both in flight and on the ground. This paper describes a portion of the in-flight aircraft icing prediction effort through a comprehensive icing prediction and evaluation project conducted by the Research Applications Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. During this project, in- flight icing potential was forecast using algorithms developed by RAP, the National Weather Service?s National Aviation Weather Advisory Unit, and the Air Force Global Weather Center in conjunction with numerical model data from the Eta, MAPS, and MM5 models. Furthermore, explicit predictions of cloud liquid water were available from the Eta and MM5 models and were also used to forecast icing potential. To compare subjectively the different algorithms, predicted icing regions and observed pilot reports were viewed simultaneously on an interactive, real-time display. To measure objectively the skill of icing predictions, a rigorous statistical evaluation was performed in order to compare the different algorithms (details and results are provided in Part II). Both the subjective and objective comparisons are presented here for a particular case study, whereas results from the entire project are found in Part II. By statistically analyzing 2 months worth of data, it appears that further advances in temperature and relative-humidity-based algorithms are unlikely. Explicit cloud liquid water predictions, however, show promising results although still relatively new in operational numerical models.