Extreme rainfall intensities and long-term rainfall risk from tropical cyclones

A. Langousis, and D. Veneziano, Extreme rainfall intensities and long-term rainfall risk from tropical cyclones, European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2009, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 11, Vienna, European Geosciences Union, 2009.

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[English]

We develop a methodology to estimate the rate of extreme rainfalls at coastal sites due to tropical cyclones (TCs). A basic component of the methodology is the probability distribution of ID,max, the maximum rainfall intensity at the site over a period D during the passage of a TC with given characteristics θ. The long-term rainfall risk is obtained by combining the conditional distribution of (ID,max|θ) with a recurrence model for θ. To illustrate the use of the model for long-term rainfall risk analysis, we formulate a recurrence model for tropical cyclones in the Gulf of Mexico that make landfall between longitudes 85o-95oW and compare the intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves for New Orleans obtained by the present model with similar curves in the literature based on continuous rainfall records. The latter include all types of rainstorms.

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