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Abstract. Ground-based observatories use multisensor observations to characterize cloud and precipitation properties. One of the challenges is how to designstrategies to best use these observations to understand these properties and evaluate weather and climate models. This paper introduces the Cloud-resolving model Radar SIMulator (CR-SIM), which uses output from high-resolution cloud-resolving models (CRMs) to emulate multiwavelength,zenith-pointing, and scanning radar observables and multisensor (radar and lidar) products. CR-SIM allows for direct comparison between an atmosphericmodel simulation and remote-sensing products using a forward-modeling framework consistent with the microphysical assumptions used in the atmosphericmodel. CR-SIM has the flexibility to easily incorporate additional microphysical modules, such as microphysical schemes and scattering calculations,and expand the applications to simulate multisensor retrieval products. In this paper, we present several applications of CR-SIM for evaluating therepresentativeness of cloud microphysics and dynamics in a CRM, quantifying uncertainties in radar–lidar integrated cloud products and multi-Dopplerwind retrievals, and optimizing radar sampling strategy using observing system simulation experiments. These applications demonstrate CR-SIM as a virtual observatory operator on high-resolution model output for a consistent comparison between model results and observations to aidinterpretation of the differences and improve understanding of the representativeness errors due to the sampling limitations of the ground-basedmeasurements. CR-SIM is licensed under the GNU GPL package and both the software and the user guide are publicly available to the scientificcommunity.