A simulator of weather radar signals can be exploited as useful reference in many applications, such as weather forecasting and now-casting models or training for aircraft
trajectory optimization to reduce flight hazard. However, it must be well verified that the simulator guarantees a good level of accuracy and consistency of the signals that
it produces. In this paper we present the procedures followed to evaluate from that point of view the performance of the Polarimetric Weather Radar Simulator (POWERS),
a simulator able to generate fully polarimetric Doppler signals in any meteorological context defined by the WRF (Weather Research and Forecasting Model), that provides
microphysical parameters as input.
To pursue the objective, we analyzed:
- the way the simulator blends the microphysical parameters provided by the WRF with the scattering amplitude parameters obtained by means of the T-matrix method;
- the impact of the changes of the microphysical parameters on the polarimetric observables
- the similarity between a real set of radar data with the one simulated starting from the same initial conditions and the statistical properties that weather radar signals should have.
