Temporal Variation Features of Convective Available Potantial Energy derived from a Ground-based Microwave Radiometer before and after Artificial Lightning Events

Convective available potential energy (CAPE) has been widely used in convective weather diagnosis and forecasting. A ground-based microwave radiometer has been installed at Guangzhou Field Experiment Site for Lightning Research and Test (GFESL) during the May-July in 2016 and 2017. The radiometer, typed MWP967KV and made in China, can work at two modes, the meteorological observation mode for atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles and the lightning observation mode for artificially-triggered lightning brightness. This paper makes use of the atmospheric temperature and humidity profile data obtained before and after artificially triggered lightning event to calculate CAPE once every 4 minutes. The CAPE data for 15 rocket-triggered lightning events have been collected and the temporal variation features of CAPE before and after rocket-triggered lightning events have been analyzed. The preliminary results show that in most cases the CAPE before rocket-triggered lightning event shows an increasing trend to a maximum and then decreases quickly until the radiometer is commanded to go to its lightning observation mode, and that the average of CAPE over an hour before rocket-triggered lightning event is larger than that after rocket-triggered lightning event.