ABSTRACT
Thunderstorms are a major source of global precipitation and by virtue of their vertical mass transport are major players in determining the distribution of water substance throughout the atmosphere. A surprisingly wide range of meteorological situations exhibit thunderstorms: air mass convection, cold frontal convection, warm frontal convection, mesoscale convective complexes, winter snowstorms, arctic hurricanes, monsoon convection, typhoons, and hurricanes. The sun is the ultimate source of energy for thunderstorm convection and, at a larger scale, for the general circulation of the atmosphere. The processes of precipitation formation, which are evidently glossed over in the thermodynamics of parcel theory, must be considered in more detail to understand thunderstorm electrification. The differential heating of the atmosphere near the earth's surface relative to the atmospheric column aloft is ultimately responsible for an instability that is the basis for thunderstorm convection: latent instability or conditional instability.
