Trend Analysis for Extreme Rainfall Events in New South Wales, Australia

Authors: Evan Hajani, Ataur Rahman, Khaled Haddad

Abstract:

Climate change will affect the hydrological cycle in many different ways such as increase in evaporation and rainfalls. There have been growing interests among researchers to identify the nature of trends in historical rainfall data in many different parts of the world. This paper examines the trends in annual maximum rainfall data from 30 stations in New South Wales, Australia by using two non-parametric tests, Mann-Kendall (MK) and Spearman’s Rho (SR). Rainfall data were analyzed for fifteen different durations ranging from 6 min to 3 days. It is found that the sub-hourly durations (6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 48 minutes) show statistically significant positive (upward) trends whereas longer duration (subdaily and daily) events generally show a statistically significant negative (downward) trend. It is also found that the MK test and SR test provide notably different results for some rainfall event durations considered in this study. Since shorter duration sub-hourly rainfall events show positive trends at many stations, the design rainfall data based on stationary frequency analysis for these durations need to be adjusted to account for the impact of climate change. These shorter durations are more relevant to many urban development projects based on smaller catchments having a much shorter response time.

Keywords: Climate change, Mann-Kendall test, Spearman’s Rho test, trends, design rainfall.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1097166

References:

[1] D. Karpouzos, S. Kavalieratou and C. Babajimopoulos, “Trend analysis of precipitation data in Pieria Region (Greece),” European Water, 2010, vol. 30, pp. 31-40.
[2] W. S. Ashley, T. L. Mote, P. G. Dixon, S. L. Trotier, E. J. Powell, J. D. Durkee and A. J. Grundstein, “Distribution of mesoscale convective complex rainfall in the United States,” Monthly Weather Review, 2003, vol. 131, pp. 3003-3017.
[3] M. R. Haylock, T. C. Peterson, L. M. Alves, T. Ambrizzi, Y. M. T. Anuncia¸ J. Baez, V. R. Barros, M. A. Berlato, M. Bidegain, G. Coronel, V. Corradi, V. J. Garcia, A. M. Grimm, D. Karoly, J. A. Marengo, M. B. Marino, D. Moncunill, D. Nechet, J. Quintana, E. Rebello, M. Rusticucci, J. L. Santos, I. Trebejo and L. A. Vincent, “Trends in total and extreme south American rainfall in 1960–2000 and links with sea surface temperature,” Journal of Climate, 2006, vol. 19, pp. 1490-1512.
[4] A. Burgueno, C. Serra and X. Lana, “ Monthly and annual statistical distributions of daily rainfall at the Fabra observatory (Barcelona,NE Spain) for the years 1917–1999,” Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 2004, vol. 77, pp. 57-75, doi: 10.1007/s00704-003-0020-9.
[5] T. O. Odekunle, E. E. Balogun and O. O. Ogunkoya, “On the prediction of rainfall onset and retreat dates in Nigeria,” Theoretical and applied Climatology, 2005, vol. 81, pp. 101-112, doi: 10.1007/s00704-004- 0108-x.
[6] P. Zhai, X. Zhang, H. Wan, and X. Pan, “Trends in Total Precipitation and Frequency of Daily Precipitation Extremes over China,” Journal of Climate, 2005, vol. 18, pp. 1096-1108.
[7] F. Fujibe, “Long-Term Changes in Precipitation in Japan,” Journal of Disaster Research, 2008, vol. 3, pp. 51-52.
[8] J. Hannaford and G. Buys, “Trends in seasonal river flow regimes in the UK,” Journal of Hydrology, 2012, vol. 475, pp. 158-174.
[9] P. P. Nikhil Raj and P. A. Azeez, “Trend analysis of rainfall in Bharathapuzha River basin, Kerala, India,” International Journal of Climatology, 2012, vol. 32, pp. 533-539, doi: 10.1002/joc.2283.
[10] M. Hanif, A. Khan and S. Adnan, “Latitudinal precipitation characteristics and trends in Pakistan,” Journal of Hydrology, 2013, vol. 492, pp. 266-272.
[11] D. H. Burn and A.Taleghani, “Estimates of changes in design rainfall values for Canada,” Hydrological Processes, 2013, vol. 27, pp. 1590- 1599, doi: 10.1002/hyp.9238.
[12] M. R. Hamdi, M. Abu-Allaban, A. Al Shayeb, M. Jaber and N. M. Momani, “Climate change in Jordan: A comprehensive examination approach,” American Journal of Environmental Sciences, 2009, vol. 5, pp. 58-68.
[13] C. Clarke, M. Hulley, J. Marsalek and E. Watt, “Stationarity of A max series of short-duration rainfall for long-term Canadian stations: detection of jumps and trends,” Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 2011, vol. 38, pp. 1175–1184.
[14] A. Rana, C. B. Uvo, L. Bengtsson and P. P. Sarthi, “Trend analysis for rainfall in Delhi and Mumbai, India,” Climate Dynamics, 2012, vol. 38, pp. 45-56, doi: 10.1007/s00382-011-1083-4.
[15] A. Mondal, S. Kundu and A. Mukhopadhyay, “Rainfall trend analysis by Mann-Kendall test: a case study of north-eastern part of Cuttack District, Orissa,” International Journal of Geology, Earth and Environmental, 2012, vol. 2, pp. 70-78.
[16] S. Yue, P. Pilon and G. Cavadias, “Power of the Mann-Kendall and Spearman’S rho tests for detecting monotonic trends in hydrological series,” Journal of Hydrology, 2002., vol. 259, pp. 254–271.
[17] N. Plummer, M. J. Salinger, N. Nicholls, R. Suppiah, K. J. Hennessy, R. M. Leighton, B. Trewin, C. M. Page and J. M. Lough, “Changes in climate extremes over the Australian region and New Zealand during the twentieth century,” Climatic Change, 1999, vol. 42, pp. 183-202.
[18] M. Haylock and N. Nicholls, “Trends in extreme rainfall indices for an updated high quality data set for Australia, 1910-1998”, International Journal of Climatology, 2000., vol. 20, pp. 1533-1541.
[19] P. Y. Groisman, R. W. Knight, D. R Easterling, T. R Karl, G. C. Hegerl, and V. N. Razuvaev, ”Trends in intense precipitation in the climate record,” Journal of Climate, 2005, vol. 615, pp. 1326-1350.
[20] A. J. E Gallant, K.J Hennessy and J. Risbey, “Trends in rainfall indices for six Australian regions: 1910-2005,” Australian Meteorological Magazine, 2007, vol. 56, pp. 223-239.
[21] L.V. Alexander, X. Zhang, T. C. Peterson, J. Caesar, B. Gleason and A. M. G. Klein Tank, “Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation,” Journal of Geophysical Research- Atmospheres, 2006, vol. 111, doi:10.1029/2005JD006290.
[22] R. Hardwick Jones, S. Westra and A. Sharma, “Observed relationships between extreme sub-daily precipitation, surface temperature and relative humidity,” Geophysical Research Letters, 2010, vol. 37, pp. 1-5.
[23] J. Li, J. Feng and Y. Li, “A possible cause of decreasing summer rainfall in northeast Australia,” International Journal of Climatology, 2012, vol. 32, pp. 995-1005.
[24] Y. R Chen, B., Yu and G. Jenkins, “Secular variation in rainfall intensity and temperature in eastern Australia,” Journal of Hydrometeorology, 2013, vol.14, pp.1356-1363. doi: http://dx.doi.org /10.1175/JHM-D-12- 0110.1.
[25] R. K. Chowdhury and S. Beecham, “Australian rainfall trends and their relation to the southern oscillation index,” Hydrological Processes, 2010, vol. 24, pp. 504-514.
[26] D. Jakob, D. J. Karoly and A. Seed, “Non-stationarity in daily and subdaily intense rainfall–Part 1: Sydney, Australia,” Natural Hazards and Earth System Science, 2011, vol. 11, pp. 2263-2271.
[27] M. Loveridge and A. Rahman, “Trend analysis of rainfall losses using an event-based hydrological model in eastern NSW,” in Proc. 20th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Adelaide, Australia, 1–6 December 2013, pp. 2569-2575.
[28] A. G. Yilmaz and B. J. C Perera, “Changes in intensity-frequencyduration relationship of heavy rainfalls at a station in Melbourne,” in Proc. 20th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, Adelaide, Australia, 2013, pp. 2834-2840.
[29] H. B. Mann, “Non-parametric tests against trend,” Econometrica, 1945, vol. 13, pp. 245-259.
[30] M. G. Kendall, Rank Correlation Methods, 1975, Griffin, London.