Plane in flight(John McArthur / Unsplash)New forecasting tools aim to make flying safer by addressing turbulence and icing hazards. Find out how as LPM's Bill Burton talks with Tawana Andrew.This transcript was edited for clarity and length.Bill Burton: It's time for us to take a look at the Scien ce Behind the Forecast as I'm joined by WAVE 3 meteorologist Tawana Andrew. Good morning, Tawana.Tawana Andrew: Good morning. Today we're talking about a new tool that is going to significantly help with aviation forecasting.BB: This is pretty impressive. Tell us about these updates.TA: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, aka NOAA, just introduced this new tool that's going to help to protect aircraft from two of the most common hazards, which are turbulence and icing.Turbulence can range from a little bit of rumbling to severe motion that can significantly damage an aircraft. The severity of turbulence does depend on what causes it, and atmospheric stability.On the other side of things, icing, ice accumulation and accretion on planes, happens when you have those tiny little water droplets hitting and freezing on contact with a plane surface. When ice builds up, it can reduce lift, which is absolutely essential for a plane to be airborne, and can even lead to what's called an aerodynamic stall. That could lead to a temporary loss of control. Ice can form in the air and on the ground, but this new system should help with in-air icing.A lot of people don't know this, but every single day, the 122 National Weather Service offices across the country provide over 3,000 regularly scheduled weather forecasts for about 700 airports in the U.S.BB: 3,000 just for the airports?TA: Just for the airports. On top of that, the National Weather Service has an aviation weather center where they issue more than 300 aviation weather forecasts every day. On top of that, they generate on average about 55,000 in-flight aviation weather warnings annually. They're doing a lot of work to make sure that pilots get the information they need.The FAA and NOAA have been working together for about 25 years, and they have a brand new program that just came out, and it's called the Domestic Aviation Forecast System. This is supposed to help to create more detailed turbulence and icing forecasts. This system is supposed to give pilots access to real-time information about changing weather conditions along their flight paths.The domestic aviation forecast system, or DAFS for short, because we love our acronyms around here, is based on the high resolution rapid refresh weather model, or the HER model. That model is designed to predict rapidly changing short range weather events, especially like severe weather, and it uses a 1.8 mile resolution grid. This is a significant improvement, because the previous models that they were using for icing and turbulence were based on an eight mile grid.BB: Wow, that's just a bit of a difference!TA: They've significantly improved the resolution. This new system inputs atmospheric data every 15 minutes and updates hourly. That improved vertical and horizontal resolution should be able to offer pilots a lot more options and better options for navigating safely around any weather hazard that they may come into contact with. ...read more read less