Current Icing Potential (CIP)
Current Icing Potential: Colors depict expected icing severity; the red corss-hatching shows regions of supercooled large drop icing, which pose an extra hazard for many aircraft.
The Current Icing Potential (CIP), developed at NCAR, is now an approved operational product run at the National Center for Environmental Prediction’s (NCEP) Aviation Weather Center. CIP provides an hourly diagnosis of the potential of encountering icing conditions over the CONUS at 20-km horizontal and 1000-ft vertical resolution. Expected severity and the probability of encounter are included in the output files and displays.
The CIP algorithm combines numerical model output with weather observations – satellite imagery, radar reflectivity, surface observations and pilot reports – to deduce likely locations for in-flight icing conditions. A fuzzy logic technique, based on physical concepts as well as forecaster experience, is employed to merge the data sets and produce the final icing product. CIP output is available on operational ADDS (Aviation Digital Data Service).
View Current Icing Potential (CIP)
Forecast Icing Product
CIP’s forecast companion, the Forecast Icing Product (FIP), and current/forecast Alaska icing algorithms, CIP/FIPAK, are run experimentally at NCAR and outputs are available on Experimental ADDS. A global version, covering remote areas used in oceanic aircraft routes, is planned for the future.
View Forecast Icing Product (FIP) and
Current/Forecast Alaska Icing Product
(CIP/FIPAK)