Quality control process of the daily rainfall series available in Catalonia from 1855 to the present

The quality control of weather data is a necessity and a responsibility of meteorological services that store, distribute, and use these data. In the present work, a newly designed quality control procedure for daily rainfall data is presented after it has been adjusted and tested with more than 10^7 data from 1726 daily rainfall measurement sites in Catalonia. It is applicable to data from different origins (e.g., automatic weather stations or manual historical measurements). The procedure is focused on relative comparison of daily data with reference stations that are automatically selected after an initial estimation of their quality and a proximity study regarding location and correlation. The presented procedure has been verified taking advantage of an available network in the study area that has been routinely quality controlled by technicians of the Meteorological Service of Catalonia. The newly designed quality control procedure for daily precipitation yields good results, especially for extreme values: type I error under 10% is found for values up to 150 mm (error decreasing for lower values) and type II error is under 16% when reported values are twice a measure of 50 mm or more (error decreasing for more extreme values). After the application of the quality control procedure, a selection of series with the minimum desired quality is achieved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Return period curves for extreme 5-min rainfall amounts at the Barcelona urban network

Heavy rainfall episodes are relatively common in the conurbation of Barcelona and neighbouring cities (NE Spain), usually due to storms generated by convective phenomena in summer and eastern and south-eastern advections in autumn. Prevention of local flood episodes and right design of urban drainage have to take into account the rainfall intensity spread instead of a simple evaluation of daily rainfall amounts. The database comes from 5-min rain amounts recorded by tipping buckets in the Barcelona urban network along the years 1994–2009. From these data, extreme 5-min rain amounts are selected applying the peaks-over-threshold method for thresholds derived from both 95% percentile and the mean excess plot. The return period curves are derived from their statistical distribution for every gauge, describing with detail expected extreme 5-min rain amounts across the urban network. These curves are compared with those derived from annual extreme time series. In this way, areas in Barcelona submitted to different levels of flood risk from the point of view of rainfall intensity are detected. Additionally, global time trends on extreme 5-min rain amounts are quantified for the whole network and found as not statistically significant.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Analysis of synoptic patterns in relationship with severe rainfall events in the Ebre Observatory (Catalonia)

The study has obtained a classification of the synoptic patterns associated with a selection of extreme rain episodes registered in the Ebre Observatory between 1905 and 2003, showing a return period of not less than 10 years for any duration from 5 min to 24 h. These episodes had been previously classified in four rainfall intensity groups attending to their meteorological time scale. The synoptic patterns related to every group have been obtained applying a multivariable analysis to three atmospheric levels: sea-level pressure, temperature, and geopotential at 500 hPa. Usually, the synoptic patterns associated with intense rain in southern Catalonia are featured by low-pressure systems advecting warm and wet air from the Mediterranean Sea at the low levels of the troposphere. The configuration in the middle levels of the troposphere is dominated by negative anomalies of geopotential, indicating the presence of a low or a cold front, and temperature anomalies, promoting the destabilization of the atmosphere. These configurations promote the occurrence of severe convective events due to the difference of temperature between the low and medium levels of troposphere and the contribution of humidity in the lowest levels of the atmosphere.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Analysis of extreme rainfall in the Ebre Observatory (Spain)

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1476-0Relationship between maximum rainfall rates for time intervals between 5 minutes and 24 hours has been studied from almost a century (1905-2003) of rainfall data registered in the Ebre Observatory (Tarragona, Spain). Intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) curves and its master equation for every return period in the location have been obtained, as well as the probable maximum precipitation (PMP) for all the considered durations. In particular, the value of the 1-day PMP has resulted 415 mm, very similar to previous estimations of this variable for the same location. Extreme rainfall events recorded in this period have been analyzed and classified according to their temporal scale. Besides the three main classes of cases corresponding to the main meteorological scales, local, mesoscale and synoptic, a fourth group constituted by complex events with high intense rates for a large range of durations has been identified also, indicating the contribution of different scale meteorological processes acting together in the origin of the rainfall. A weighted intensity index taking into account the maximum rainfall rate in representative durations of every meteorological scale has been calculated for every extreme rainfall event in order to reflect their complexity.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Análisis de las situaciones sinópticas correspondientes a episodios de lluvia severa en Barcelona

Postprint (published version

Cálculo de los coeficientes de cambio climático para diferentes horizontes y escenarios a partir de las proyecciones de precipitación diaria para el área metropolitana de Madrid

Informe nº2Actualización de las curvas IDF en la Comunidad de Madrid. Cálculo de los coeficientes de cambio climático para diferentes horizontes y diferentes escenarios a través de la técnica de invarianza de escala sobre la base de las proyecciones de precipitación diaria corregida para eventos extremosPreprin

Book availability in Canada, 1752-1820, and the Scottish contribution

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN030803 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Actualización de las curvas IDF para el área metropolitana de Madrid

Informe nº1Actualización de las curvas IDF en la Comunidad de Madrid. Cálculo de los coeficientes de cambio climático para diferentes horizontes y diferentes escenarios a través de la técnica de invarianza de escala sobre la base de las proyecciones de precipitación diaria corregida para eventos extremosPreprin

Ingluence of climate change on IDF curves for the Barcelona metropolitan area

Informe final sobre canvi clímatic a BarcelonaThe report assessing Regional Climate Chace (RCC) prepared by researches from the CLIVAR-Spain network and presented on 12th April 2010 by the Secretary of State for Climate Change, brings together and evaluates information about the physical effects of climate change that have been observed recently in the Iberian Peninsula (IP). The aim of the report is to improve understanding of climatic changes that are affecting, or have already had effect on, the IPC so that we can better anticipate the impact of future climate changes at different time scales.Preprin

On the consideration of scaling properties of extreme rainfall in Madrid (Spain) for developing a generalized intensity-duration-frequency equation and assessing probable maximum precipitation estimates

This is a copy of the author 's final draft version of an article published in the journal Theoretical and applied climatology. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1998-0The fractal behavior of extreme rainfall intensities registered between 1940 and 2012 by the Retiro Observatory of Madrid (Spain) has been examined, and a simple scaling regime ranging from 25 min to 3 days of duration has been identified. Thus, an intensity-duration-frequency (IDF) master equation of the location has been constructed in terms of the simple scaling formulation. The scaling behavior of probable maximum precipitation (PMP) for durations between 5 min and 24 h has also been verified. For the statistical estimation of the PMP, an envelope curve of the frequency factor (k m ) based on a total of 10,194 station-years of annual maximum rainfall from 258 stations in Spain has been developed. This curve could be useful to estimate suitable values of PMP at any point of the Iberian Peninsula from basic statistical parameters (mean and standard deviation) of its rainfall series.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft