Preliminary Findings of Inflight Icing Field Test to Support Icing Remote Sensing Technology Assessment

Abstract

NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research have developed an icing remote sensing technology that has demonstrated skill at detecting and classifying icing hazards in a vertical column above an instrumented ground station. This technology has recently been extended to provide volumetric coverage surrounding an airport. Building on the existing vertical pointing system, the new method for providing volumetric coverage will utilize a vertical pointing cloud radar, a multifrequency microwave radiometer with azimuth and elevation pointing, and a NEXRAD radar. The new terminal area icing remote sensing system processes the data streams from these instruments to derive temperature, liquid water content, and cloud droplet size for each examined point in space. These data are then combined to ultimately provide icing hazard classification along defined approach paths into an airport.

Authors

• King, Michael NASA Glenn Research Center
• Reehorst, Andrew NASA Glenn Research Center
• Serke, Dave National Center for Atmospheric Research

Keywords

• remote sensors
• flight test
• Aircraft Icing