FORECASTING OF POSSIBLE AIRCRAFT ICING BASED ON OUTPUT OF THE WRF-ARW MODEL

A method to predict areas of possible aircraft icing and its intensity is presented. Method is operated on model gridded output. An index I-ice to identify meteorological conditions which contribute to aircraft icing is calculated at each point of a three-dimensional grid as a product of pressure and difference between mixing ratio and saturation mixing ratio multiplied by given coefficient. An area of possible icing covers grid points where values of I-ice exceed zero. Icing intensity is determined by a value of I-ice; range of positive values of I-ice is divided into three intervals which correspond to light, moderate and severe icing. Presented method is tested on numerical output of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) - Advanced Research WRF (WRF-ARW) with 5-km horizontal grid spacing for Eastern Siberia and Russian Far East. Preliminary evaluations of forecasts are presented.