A new tool for investigating the impact of radar system design and sampling methods on the observed structure of the atmosphere has been developed as part of the Center for Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) at the University of Oklahoma (OU). The emulator takes very high-resolution output from a numerical simulation of the atmosphere and applies Mie scattering theory along with user-specified radar scanning parameters and radar system characteristics to determine the equivalent radar reflectivity factor, radial Doppler velocity, spectrum width, and power spectra that would be observed with a weather radar. This allows for quantitative study of the impact of observing system design on the ability to diagnose significant atmospheric features and how uncertainty in radar measurements depends on system characteristics and sampling strategies.

Such information would be useful in a wide variety of meteorological, hydrologic, and remote sensing applications. To date, our study has focused on a tornadic supercell simulated at a 25 m spatial grid resolution with liquid-phase microphysics. We will be able to demonstrate what would be observed with a X-band Doppler radar with system characteristics matching those planned for the Oklahoma Netrad, the first operational CASA test-bed.