Recent success stories from the Inflight Icing PDT

The FAA has funded coordinated research in inflight icing forecasting and detection since late 1989. The product development team has conducted research and development in five areas: algorithms for diagnosing and predicting icing conditions, including implementation; basic icing physics studies; numerical weather prediction model microphysics development; remote sensing with ground-based radars and microwave radiometers as well as satellites; and icing topics specific to Alaska. We began with an ambitious plan and have many success stories to tell. In the past few years, for example, we have: transferred algorithms to the Aviation Weather Center for operational use; developed several promising radar-based remote sensing systems for icing condition detection; developed microphysical parameterizations for MM5 and implemented them into the current RUC-13; and estimated the frequency of icing conditions, including supercooled large drops, over the United States, Canada and Europe. The presentation will highlight these successes and describe how they evolved from sixteen years of focused efforts on inflight icing research.