Extreme value theory for precipitation: sensitivity analysis for climate change

Extreme value theory for the maximum of a time series of daily precipitation amount is described. A chain-dependent process is assumed as a stochastic model for daily precipitation, with the intensity distribution being the gamma. To examine how the effective return period for extreme high precipitation amounts would change as the parameters of the chain-dependent process change (i.e., probability of a wet day, shape and scale parameters of the gamma distribution), a sensitivity analysis is performed. This sensitivity analysis is guided by some results from statistical downscaling that relate patterns in large-scale atmospheric circulation to local precipitation, providing a physically plausible range of changes in the parameters. For the particular location considered in the example, the effective return period is most sensitive to the scale parameter of the intensity distribution. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.