Is there an intrinsic characteristic of free moist atmospheric convection that induces a particular type of space-time structure within cloud fileds? What is the expected nature of the spatial distribution of cumuli within unforced cumulus cloud fields? This paper is one of two in this collection that addresses these fundamental questions. The thermodynamic effects of convection are quantified as functions of changes of convective available potential energy (CAPE) induced by the convective overturning. The time rate of change of CAPE is parameterized in terms of a kernel of influence or stabilization function. A three-dimensional cloud model is used to infer and quantify stabilization functions by performing single-cloud experiments. Measured stabilization functions are positive everywhere, decreasing away from the cloud center. Stabilization functions are decomposed into various thermodynamic contributions involving pressure, temperature, and moisture changes in the boundary layer and above. It is observed that the major contribution to the environmental stabilization comes from the drying of the planetary boundary layer induced by subsidence. The thermodynamic effect of nonprecipitating and precipitating convection is to reduce CAPE in the surrounding environment and hence reduce the conditional probability of further convection nearby. A new hypothesis with respect to the spatial distribution of cumuli is postulated. The inhibition hypothesis states that, under completely homogeneous external conditions and assuming a spatially random distribution of cloud-triggering mechanisms, the spatial distribution of cumuli in the resulting cloud field must be regular, as opposed to either random or clustered, because cumulus clouds tend to reduce the available energy for convection, thereby inhibiting further convection nearby. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1990