ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Earth Sci.
Sec. Atmospheric Science
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1586116
Analysis of the Characteristics of Four Severe Aircraft Icing Events in Southwest China during the Winter of 2023
Provisionally accepted
- Civil Aviation Flight University of China, Guanghan, China
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This study investigates four severe aircraft icing cases in Southwest China during the winter of 2023, focusing on their circulation patterns and cloud macro-characteristics. The results indicate that the meridional Yunnan-Guizhou quasi-stationary front (YGQSF) drives these severe icing. The synergistic interaction between the cold Mongolian high and Northeast China Cold Vortex intensified East Asian meridional circulation, triggering strong convergence of warm-moist and dry-cold air over Southwest China. The terrain-forced updraft near the front continuously transports moisture to 700 hPa, where the airflow shifts to westerlies, inducing the formation of convergent cloud clusters and horizontal cloud expansion. Meanwhile, a persistently maintained closed vertical circulation cell on the cold side may play a vital role in sustaining cold air masses and frontal cloud clusters over Southwest China. Furthermore, the temperature inversion layer (within 850-700 hPa) east of YGQSF maintained supercooled liquid water reservoirs and limited ice-phase particles via stable "warm-over-cold" stratification and suppressed convection. Besides, analysis of cloud macro-characteristics showed that the frontal icing-related cloud coverage reached 100%, with all cases occurring in supercooled clouds oriented from southwest to northeast. The cloud top temperatures ranged from -25°C to -10°C, and the cloud top heights exhibited a "higher in the north, lower in the south" distribution, generally between 5-7 km. These results provide a thermodynamic framework for forecasting severe winter aircraft icing in Southwest China.
Keywords: southwest China, Aircraft icing, quasi-stationary front, cloud top temperature, Supercooled water
Received: 02 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Wen, Wang and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chao Wang, Civil Aviation Flight University of China, Guanghan, China
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