A multipurpose radar simulation package: QuickBeam

The launch of the CloudSat cloud radar has provided some of the first near-global views of the three-dimensional structure of clouds from space. To evaluate clouds in numerical models and compare them to the observations made by CloudSat, it is useful to have a tool that converts modeled clouds to radar returns that might be viewed by a radar system on a satellite passing over the model domain. QuickBeam is a user-friendly radar simulation package that performs this function and is freely available to the :meteorological community. The workings of the simulator are briefly described and several applications of the simulator to numerical models are demonstrated.