Investigation of Trends, Temporal Changes in Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Curves and Extreme Rainfall Events Clustering at Regional Scale Using 5 min Rainfall Data

Bezak Bezak,Mikoš Mikoš

doi:10.3390/w11102167

Abstract

High-frequency rainfall data is needed in different practical hydrologic applications, such as the construction of the intensity-duration-frequency curves (IDF). This paper presents an investigation of trends (station-wise and regional) for several rainfall durations that were constructed based on the 5 min rainfall data. Moreover, changes in IDF results for two 22-year sub-samples were also analyzed. Additionally, changes in extreme events clustering at the regional scale were also analyzed. Ten rainfall stations (44 years of data 1975–2018) located in Slovenia (central EU, approx. 20,000 km2) were used in this study. Results indicate that no clear pattern in the detected trends can be found based on the analyzed stations. However, all the statistically significant trends at the significance level of 0.05 for the 5 min rainfall data were negative. Moreover, regional trends for this duration were also statistically significant. The changes in the design rainfall events between two equal sub-samples (1975–1996, 1997–2018) were between −30% and 60%. The investigation of changes in extreme rainfall event clustering indicated that extreme 5, 30, and 60 min events could more frequently occur a few days earlier in spring or summer compared to the past period. On the other hand, longer duration events (i.e., 360 and 720 min) tend to more frequently occur a few days later in autumn compared to the past. In most cases, changes are not statistically significant.

Highlights

Different hydrologic products can be derived based on the high-frequency rainfall data, such as 5 min rainfall data
Climate change is expected to lead to more frequent extreme rainfall events, which means that the nonstationary classical approach used for the IDF curves construction should be updated (e.g., [2,3,4])
In the first step of the statistical analyses, the trend detection based on the AM and AM5 samples was carried out using the Mann-Kendall test

Summary

Introduction

Different hydrologic products can be derived based on the high-frequency rainfall data, such as 5 min rainfall data. Intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves are an example of such a product that is used as one of the inputs in engineering applications for the design hyetograph definition or rational equation (e.g., [1]). Knowledge about changes in the rainfall processes related to the high-frequency data is important in order to evaluate the validity of the constructed IDF curves and to test if there are any changes in the IDF analysis results when using some additional years (e.g., the last few years). Climate change is expected to lead to more frequent extreme rainfall events, which means that the nonstationary classical approach used for the IDF curves construction should be updated (e.g., [2,3,4]). Many studies have analyzed changes in extreme rainfall events. Madsen et al [2] reviewed studies that investigated trends in the extreme precipitation in Europe

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Conclusion