Search results for " dry spells"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Modelling the frequency distribution of inter-arrival times from daily precipitation time-series in North-West Italy
2018
Abstract The discrete three-parameter Lerch distribution is used to analyse the frequency distribution of inter-arrival times derived from 26 daily precipitation time-series, collected by stations located throughout a 28,000 km2 area in North-West Italy (altitudes ranging from 113 m to 2,170 m a.s.l.). The precipitation regime of these Alpine regions is very different (latitude 44.5 to 46.5 N) from the typical Mediterranean precipitation regime of the island of Sicily (latitude 37 to 38 N), where the Lerch distribution has already been tested and whose results are compared. In order to verify the homogeneity of the precipitation time series, the Pettitt test was preliminarily performed. In …
Diagnosis and predictability of intraseasonal characteristics of wet and dry spells over equatorial east Africa
2010
Most of Eastern Africa has arid and semi-arid climate with high space-time variability in rainfall. The droughts are very common in this region, and often persist for several years, preceded or followed by extreme floods. Most of the livelihoods and socio-economic activities however remain rain-dependent leading to severe negative impacts during the periods of occurrence of climate extremes. It has been noted that one extreme event was capable of reversing national economic growth made over a period of several years. Thus no sustainable development can be attained in eastern Africa without effective mainstreaming of climate information in the development policies, plans and programmes. Many…
Modelling wet and dry spells for daily rainfall data series: an application to irrigation management in North-West Italy
2016
Rainfall time variability is relevant for agricultural production. The daily time scale is often used in modelling crop and soil water balance. In this work a novel statistical analysis of wet and dry spells is presented, together with an application in an Italian area characterised by a relevant climate spatial variability, due to the presence of both high mountains (e.g.: Mont Blanc) and of the Mediterranean Sea. Statistical analysis of the sequences of rainy days, wet spells (WS), and that of no-rainy days, dry spells (DS), could be carried out separately (as widely applied in the past) or jointly, by introducing the inter-arrival time (IT), representing the time elapsed between two subs…
Extreme dry spells over the Mediterranean Basin during the wet season: assessment of HyMeX/Med-CORDEX regional climate simulations (1979-2009).
2018
16 pages; International audience; Exceptional dry spells, in this study referred to as very long dry spells (VLDS), are natural hazards to which the Mediterranean region is extremely vulnerable, with socio‐economic and environmental impacts. In this study, they are characterized in terms of location, spatial extent, duration, temporal variability and associated atmospheric circulations. The main objective is to assess the performance of five HyMeX/Med‐CORDEX regional climate simulations to detect and reproduce VLDS in comparison with the E‐OBS observed daily gridded data. Models accurately reproduce the occurrence of precipitation around the Mediterranean Basin, and therefore the occurrence…
Épisodes secs en hiver dans le bassin méditerranéen : variabilité et forçages atmosphériques (1957-2013).
2016
The mean number of dry days in winter increased in the Mediterranean Basin during the 1957-2013 period,mainly because of dry spells becoming longer. The shortest events (Very Short Dry Spells) were less frequentwhereas longer events (Short Dry Spells, Medium Dry Spells and Long Dry Spells) were more frequent on theMediterranean Basin. 76 very long events (Very Long Dry Spells – VLDS) occurred during the 1957-2013period. A hierarchical clustering analysis of these VLDS events allows to detect 5 mainly Mediterraneanconfigurations: North-West Mediterranean, West Mediterranean, North-East Mediterranean, South-EastMediterranean and localized events.
Spatial variability of dry spells duration statistical distributions
2014
Dry spells duration and its extent in space, is a key factor in water resources problems. In order to modelling the empirical distribution of dry spells (DS) frequencies observed in Sicily (i.e. in a typical Mediterranean climate), Agnese et al. (2014) successfully applied the two-parameter polylogarithm-series distribution. Because of the strong seasonality characterising Sicily’s rainfall regime, statistical analysis was separately applied to two data sets, referred to as “dry” and “wet” seasons, respectively. In this work, a similar analysis was carried out for a set of 26 DS time-series recorded in a large area (about 30000 km2), including Piedmont and the Aosta Valley. Area altitude ra…