Comparison of energetic perspectives on the 2016 and 2018 heatwaves over the Korean Peninsula

Heatwaves over the Korean Peninsula have intensified owing to global warming, with the events of 2016 and 2018 ranking among the most severe. While earlier studies emphasized circulation and land–atmosphere feedback, the energetic mechanisms of their life cycles are not well understood. This study used the Process-Resolving Energetics-based Attribution Framework (PREAF) to quantify the total energy in the atmosphere, including internal, latent, geopotential, and kinetic energies, during the developing, mature, and decaying phases. The total energy better represented the onset, persistence, and termination of heatwaves than temperature alone. Overall, the internal energy dominated, but latent and geopotential energies played distinct phase-dependent roles. In 2016, horizontal advection drove the development, vertical advection offset some of the radiative and advective losses during the mature phase, whereas cold advection caused system decay. In 2018, the moist air inflow resulted in latent energy accumulation, and the Western North Pacific Subtropical High and Tibetan High sustained long adiabatic heating. Despite significant losses from radiation and horizontal advection during the mature phase, persistence was enabled by vertical advection and surface fluxes. This decay was dominated by vertical advection linked to the collapse of the anticyclone. Therefore, the PREAF distinguished the gradual internal energy accumulation driven by horizontal advection in 2016 from the latent energy dominance and collapse-induced vertical loss observed in 2018. These findings demonstrate the diagnostic value of PREAF and suggest that enhanced high-pressure variability and intensified land–atmosphere coupling under warming conditions sustain heatwaves.