Monte-Carlo simulations of active remote sensing instruments within a highly resolved 3D cloudy atmosphere

This preliminary study aims to test a back to end ‘numerical laboratory’ based on three main numerical tools namely an atmospheric model, Monte-Carlo codes, and retrieval algorithms. To be more specific, this numerical laboratory aims to simulate realistic observations of satellite missions such as the A-Train, EarthCARE (Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explore) and 3MI (The Multi-Viewing, -Channel, -Polarization Imager) based on Large Eddy Simulation outputs in order to quantify the 3D effects of the atmosphere as well as the impact of the microphysical/optical hypotheses, and to develop and test new retrieval algorithms. Preliminary results presented herein show that this approach is promising as radar and lidar signals are well simulated at high spatial resolution and numerical retrievals compared well with the model outputs especially, as expected, within the stratiform region of the simulated convective cloud.