Identification

Title

Evaluating icing nowcasts using cloudsat

Abstract

The Current Icing Product (CIP) is a model/observation fusion tool to diagnose aircraft icing probability and severity. Implemented at the Aviation Weather Center, it is used by forecasters to assess icing conditions and improve aviation support over the contiguous United States and southern Canada. However, given the three dimensional nature of the icing threat, it has been difficult to completely assess CIP effectiveness. CloudSat is a low-earth orbiting satellite containing a 3 mm cloud radar (94 GHz) that gives a two dimensional vertical profile of cloud along the orbital track of the satellite. When combined with temperature profile information, CloudSat can be used to infer information about the location and vertical structure of supercooled liquid water. Therefore, it can be used to compare to CIP. In this study first we compare CIP and CloudSat in several case studies to illustrate CIP‟s strengths and limitations. In the process we illustrate that CloudSat products are powerful observational tools in their own right, allowing unprecedented cross-sectional views of cloud systems which contain aviation hazards. Second, we compare CloudSat and CIP cloud heights statistically. For low cloud systems in particular, CIP tends to analyze cloud tops that are too high, leading to vertical overestimation of the icing hazard.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7z60qmn

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-03-31T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact