Spatial distribution of the daily precipitation concentration index in Southern Russia

Abstract

The territory of Southern Russia presents a great diversity of climates and complex orography that lead to a very different precipitation distribution. Annual precipitation amounts differ between 222mm in the coast of the Caspian Sea and >2000mm in the highest parts of the Caucasus Mountains. In order to investigate the statistical structure of daily precipitation across the study region the daily precipitation Concentration Index (CI) was used. In present paper, the CI was calculated for 42 meteorological stations during the 1970–2010 period. The analysis of precipitation concentration identified that the distribution of daily precipitation is more regular over the west, north and south regions compared to the east (the Caspian Sea coast and the Caspian Depression). The Crimean peninsula is characterized by low CI values in the north and high values in the eastern part.