Abstract:Thunderstorm potential forecasting based on three ingredients has been widely accepted. This article aims to discuss some basical questions in operational forecast applications, and clarify some easily confused concepts. The content includes atmospheric instablility and convection, thunderstorms trigger mechanism and lifting and its relationship with snoptical weather system, how to deal with the three elements of the thunderstorm “enough”, the combination of pattern recognition and ingredients based forecasting methodology. Atmospheric instablility is one of the three ingredients of convection initiation, and it is also very important to thunderstorm short time forecasting and analysis. This paper discusses various mesoscale instability related to the thunderstorm, and inicates how to estimate the spatial and temporal evolution of CAPE. In addition, the definition and criterion for potential instability and symmetric instability are discussed profoundly.