Analyse statistique des séquences sèches dans un bassin du nord de la Tunisie / Statistical analysis of dry events in a northern Tunisian basin

Abstract

A comparative statistical study of dry events during the rainy season is presented. In particular, we carried out statistical processing of the daily records of raingauges in the downstream basin of Lake Ichkeul, in the north of Tunisia. The climate is characterized by a rainy season lasting from the autumn until spring. The Poisson distribution was applied to describe the number of rainfall events, and negative binomial distribution was applied for the length of the dry events, in the rainy season. Since rainfall events are shorter, their duration follows a geometrical distribution, as theoretically required. For planning purposes, the longest seasonal dry spells associated with the various statistical recurrence periods are derived on the basis of the fitted GEV functions. A hydrological year starts at the beginning of the first rainfall event of a given season. The length of hydrological year is determined by the time interval between the start dates of two subsequent rainy seasons. The beginning of the hydrological year occurs on average toward mid-September, but the probability of it occurring before 15 September exceeds 40%. Spatial analysis of dry events is also done. A significant fraction of the dry events occurred for at least two stations simultaneously. Furthermore, 4.5% of the dry events have been observed at all three stations. The analysis of the dry events gives an alternative method to examine the dry spell phenomenon.