Monte Carlo calculations of polarized microwave radiation emerging from 3-D cloud structures

SSM/I microwave measurements of mesoscale convective systems (MCS) often show significant polarization differences (/spl Delta/T/sub V-H/) at 85 GHz in the anvil regions of clouds. To try to understand how these differences in brightness temperature (T/sub B/) are related to the microphysical cloud parameters, simulations on realistic cloud models are necessary. To this end, a Monte Carlo method for the solution of the 3-D radiative transfer equation in the microwave has been extended to compute the Stokes parameters.