Distribution of convective energy at upper level in South Korea and the possibility of artificial showery rain caused by activated CAPE

This paper reports a theoretical study on the possibility of inducing artificial showery rain using the convective available potential energy, which is naturally stored in the troposphere. We calculated the environmental parameters (frequency of climatic values, extreme value of stability index, etc.) in the upper troposphere using rawinsonde data from six main stations in Korea from 2001 to 2008 and examined the temporal spatial convective energy according to region. Our results showed that convective available potential energy, which can induce artificial rainfall, existed in the troposphere mainly in summer and were low in other seasons. Its value was found to be highest during late afternoon and in inland regions. We examined the vertical structure of the atmosphere using moisture convergence and vertical velocity (omega) and found that precipitation occurred under strong real latent instability conditions with high convective available potential energy (>3,000 J/kg) in summer and was characterized by moisture convergence at 1,000–400 hPa, moisture divergence at 400–300 hPa, and continuous ascending air current at 1,000–300 hPa (–ω), on average. However, precipitation still did not occur in more than half the cases with high convective available potential energy because, according to the analysis, convective rainfall is affected to a greater extent by the value of convective inhibition than by convective available potential energy. It was also verified that in spite of zero convective inhibition, if the updrafts at a lower level were not sufficient to generate high convective available potential energy at a level higher than the level of free convection, convective rainfall would not occur under real latent instability. Therefore, we suggest it might be possible during the summer to secure the water resources in regions without precipitation by inducing ascending air current artificially under unstable atmospheric conditions to induce showery rain.