Extreme rainfall events can have a large impact on society and can lead to loss of life and
property. Therefore, a reliable climatology of extreme rainfall is of importance, for instance, for the design of hydraulic structures. Such a climatology can be obtained by collecting maxima from long rainfall records, usually from rain gauges. These maxima are modelled using an extreme-value distribution. Now, for example, the 1-h rainfall depth that occurs on average once in 20 years can be estimated.
Weather radars provide us with a real-time overview of the precipitation intensity over the whole of the Netherlands every 5 minutes. This holds a promise for obtaining extreme rainfall statistics for short durations, such as 15 minutes, for which only few rain gauge data are available.
This research shows that, after adjustment with rain gauges, radar data are indeed suitable to obtain extreme rainfall statistics. This makes it possible to study regional differences in extreme rainfall and to estimate rainfall depths for different area sizes, such as the size of a catchment.
This research has been carried out at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) in De Bilt in cooperation with the Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group of Wageningen University. Thesis supervisor: prof. Remko Uijlenhoet. Thesis co-supervisors: dr. Iwan Holleman and dr. Adri Buishand.
Title thesis: "Climatology of extreme rainfall from rain gauges and weather radar"