Using icing algorithm output to create AIRMETs

AIRMETs (Airmen's Meteorological Information) for aircraft icing are produced at the Aviation Weather Center (AWC) and represent the official forecast of in-flight icing conditions. The AIRMET provides a six-hour forecast of icing conditions and must account for movement and evolution of the icing conditions during that time. The Current and Forecast Icing Products (CIP and FIP) are also run operationally at the AWC. They are used as guidance for the forecasters and supplementary icing information for pilots and dispatchers. The CIP and FIP provide gridded icing snapshots that are valid for one hour and evolve the conditions as observations change and model forecasts update. This paper will describe a method developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to use output from the automated icing algorithms to create a suggested icing AIRMET that could then be edited and issued by AWC forecasters.