NASA - SatCORPS - LaRC Aircraft Icing

EXTRANAVBAR
************************************************************************************************************************************************ START MAIN CONTENT HERE. ************************************************************************************************************************************************

NASA Langley Aircraft Icing Home Page

NASA Langley Aircraft Icing Home Page

Satellite data can be used to diagnose cloud conditions and to infer the icing potential within. Satellite retrievals of cloud top phase, temperature, optical thickness, effective droplet radius (Re), and liquid water path (LWP) are used to infer the probability for icing (low, medium, or high) and the potential intensity (light, moderate or greater, or heavy). For unobscured low-level clouds, the cloud top phase and temperature accurately and directly identify the presence of SLW. However, many SLW cloud layers occur beneath overlapping ice crystals. For these, a multi-layer retrieval technique is applied for cirrus overlapping stratus conditions and a cloud water content profiling technique is employed for deep continuous cloud systems in order to infer the underlying or embedded SLW cloud properties and the icing potential. Correlations with icing conditions reported by Pilot’s (icing PIREPS) indicate that higher values of satellite-derived LWP and Re are associated with higher icing probabilities and intensities. Empirical methods used to capture these relationships, and other relationships between the satellite-derived cloud properties and cloud vertical structure, are applied to the satellite retrievals to estimate the icing potential at the full spatial and temporal resolution of the satellite imagers in near real-time.

Smith, W. L., P. Minnis, C. Fleeger, D. Spangenberg, R. Palikonda, L. Nguyen, 2012: Determining the Flight Icing Threat to Aircraft with Single-Layer Cloud Parameters Derived from Operational Satellite Data. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 51, 1794–1810.

Smith, W. L., Jr, 2014: 4-D cloud properties from passive satellite data and applications to resolve the flight icing threat to aircraft. PhD Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 165 pp.

**** END MAIN CONTENT HERE. ****

NASA Langley Icing

+ Aircraft Icing Resources at NASA Langley


Go

NASA Fact

The Altus II unmanned robot plane can circle for up to 24 hours over wildfires, beaming images and data back to computers via satellite. Originally introduced as part of the Environmental Research and Sensor Technology (ERAST) Program, Altus II can map dozens of fires in a day with no risk to a pilot.

################################################################################################################################################################################## END Content Wrapper, this div surrounds the main content and the Left Nav ##################################################################################################################################################################################
NASA Logo - nasa.gov