The Intermediate Complexity Atmospheric Research (ICAR) model is a simplified atmospheric model designed primarily for climate downscaling, atmospheric sensitivity tests, and hopefully educational uses. ICAR is a quasi-dynamical downscaling approach that uses simplified wind dynamics to perform high-resolution meteorological simulations 100 to 1000 times faster than a traditional atmospheric model and can therefore be used to better characterize uncertainty across numerical weather prediction models and climate models, and in dynamical downscaling.
Gutmann, E., I. Barstad, M.P. Clark, J. Arnold, and R. Rasmussen, 2016: The Intermediate Complexity Atmospheric Research Model. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 17, 957–973, doi:10.1175/JHM-D-15-0155.1
Gutmann, E., T. Pruitt, M.P. Clark, L. Brekke, J.R. Arnold, D.A. Raff, and R.M. Rasmussen, 2014: An intercomparison of statistical downscaling methods used for water resource assessments in the United States. Water Resources Research, 50, 7167–7186, doi:10.1002/2014WR015559
Gutmann, E.D., R.M. Rasmussen, C. Liu, K. Ikeda, D.J. Gochis, M.P. Clark, J. Dudhia, and G. Thompson, 2012: A Comparison of Statistical and Dynamical Downscaling of Winter Precipitation over Complex Terrain. Journal of Climate, 25, 262–281, doi:10.1175/2011JCLI4109.1
Barstad, I., and S. Gronas, 2006: Dynamical structures for southwesterly airflow over southern Norway: the role of dissipation. Tellus Series a-Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography, 58, 2-18, doi:doi:10.1111/j.1600- 0870.2006.00152.x
Gutmann et al. (2016) describes the development of ICAR; the ICAR source code is available at https://github.com/NCAR/icar.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, National Science Foundation
