A new approach to explore climate change impact on rainfall intensity–duration–frequency curves

Abstract

Increasing the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere makes a large-scale change in atmospheric processes. Among the most dramatic effects of climate change, its impact on the type, amount, and intensity of rainfall is of particular importance. The goal of the present study was to provide a new method to investigate climate change impacts on rainfall intensity—duration—frequency (IDF) in the southwest of Iran. For this purpose, IDF curves were determined using recorded short-term rainfall from 15 stations. Then, the efficiency of the scale invariance theory was evaluated in determining IDFs by comparing IDFs resulting from observed data and IDFs estimated from the scaling model. Results demonstrated that two sets of IDFs had a good coincidence. In the next step, the data from three RCM models of the CORDEX project under two scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) were used, and daily rainfall was downscaled by the musica package. Finally, IDFs were determined for two future periods including 2025–2049 as near future and 2075–2099 as far future. The result showed that rainfall intensity decreased in the north and central parts of the region.