Rainfall analysis in the northern region of Peninsular Malaysia

Abstract

Modeling of rainfall is important for assessing the possible impacts of climate change. To achieve accurate projections of rainfall events, availability of sufficient hydrological station data is critical. Precipitation is one of the most important meteorological variables for hydrological modeling. In cases where long series of observed precipitation are not available, they can be stochastically generated by weather generators. Advanced Weather Generator (AWE-GEN) has been proven to generate precipitation data at the temperate climate regions with Gamma distribution being incorporated in the model to represent rainfall intensity. However, in a tropical climate such as Malaysia, some studies disputed the incorporation of Gamma distribution. As such, in this study, Weibull a heavy tail distribution is proposed to be used. The AWE-GEN has well performed in the wetter region such as the eastern of the peninsular. However, rainfall distribution within Peninsular Malaysia is highly variable temporally and spatially. The northern region is drier especially during the southwest monsoon season. This region receives minimal rain during the northeast monsoon due to the presence of the Titiwangsa Range which obstructs the region from getting rain by the north easterly winds. Therefore, the objectives of the study are two-fold. First, this study compares the performance of Gamma and Weibull that are incorporated in the AWE-GEN in simulating rainfall series for the northern region of the peninsular. Second, the monthly rainfall and the extreme rainfall series are simulated using the better distribution. The performances of Gamma and Weibull distributions are compared using the goodness of fit test, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). Results showed that Gamma is the better distribution in simulating rainfall at rainfall stations located at the outer parts of the northern coast whereas Weibull is the better distribution for stations located in the interior parts of the northern coast. Hourly and daily extreme rainfalls seem to be well captured at all stations. Similarly, wet spell length is well simulated while in contrast, dry spell length is slightly underestimated at all stations. Overall, Gamma and Weibull produce commendable results in simulating extreme rainfall as well as wet spell length throughout the northern region of the peninsular. (c) 2017 The Authors. Published by IASE.