A review on ice fog measurements and modeling

•Ice fog affects the aviation flight conditions.•Aviation accidents over the Arctic regions will increase about 25 times.•Ice fog cannot be predicted by current forecasting models.•New ice fog visibility parameterizations need to be developed for nowcasting applications.•Northern latitudes may face more cold fog conditions when temperatures increase.

The rate of weather-related aviation accident occurrence in the northern latitudes is likely 25 times higher than the national rate of Canada. If only cases where reduced visibility was a factor are considered, the average rate of occurrence in the north is about 31 times higher than the Canadian national rate. Ice fog occurs about 25% of the time in the northern latitudes and is an important contributor to low visibility. This suggests that a better understanding of ice fog prediction and detection is required over the northern latitudes. The objectives of this review are the following: 1) to summarize the current knowledge of ice fog microphysics, as inferred from observations and numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, and 2) to describe the remaining challenges associated with measuring ice fog properties, remote sensing microphysical retrievals, and simulating/predicting ice fog within numerical models. Overall, future challenges related to ice fog microphysics and visibility are summarized and current knowledge is emphasized.