Analysis of rainfall Data

• Rainfall during a year or season (or a number of years) consists of several

storms.

The characteristics of a rainstorm are :

(i) Intensity (cm/hr),

(ii) Duration (min, hr, or days),
(iii) Frequency (once in 5 years or once in 10, 20, 40, 60 or 100 years)
(iv) Areal extent (i.e., area over which it is distributed).
 Analysis of rainfall Data

• Rainfall is a random variable

• Mathematical theory of probability is used to analyse its distribution.

• In order to determine the frequency of a particular extreme rainfall event,

the rainfall of past storms is analyzed.
• Usually the data of the place is collected and arranged in
chronological order.

• The data collected ought to be adequate, consistent and

accurate.

• Records of at least 20 years would give more reliable results

for frequency analysis.
 Common definitions:
i) Recurrence Interval (Return period) Tr:

 This is the average time interval between two events that equal or exceed a
particular level.

 It is therefore the average interval in which a specified event is equaled or

exceeded.

• For example if 100cm of rainfall in 24 hours on average is equaled or

exceeded once in 25 years, the recurrence interval of the 100cm of rainfall is
therefore 25 years.
• Tr is not periodicity of events, (i.e it does not imply that 100cm of
rainfall will occur every after 25 years)

• It means that given say 250 years, the rainfall of this magnitude will
be equaled or exceeded 10 times (250/25 = 10) .
• The rainfall event may therefore be equaled or exceeded even after
one year or twice in two consecutive years.

• Recurrence interval is also known as return period

ii) Probability of Occurrence p:

 This is the probability of an event being equaled or

exceeded in any one year.

 It is the inverse of the recurrence.

P=
iii)Frequency f:

 Frequency is the probability of occurrence of an event

expressed as a percentage.

f = 100p
f = ()100
iv) Probability of non-occurrence q:

q= 1-p

 Indicates the probability that a hydraulic structure does

not fail due to floods/ rainfall event in any year.

 
v) Probability of non occurrence in N successive years (K):

 Assume that the annual flood peaks are independent events, the
probability that the structure does not fail in the next N years is
the probability of non occurrence K

K = (1-p) N
vi) Probability of Occurrence at least once (Risk) J:

 The probability of an event occurring at least once in N successive

years is given by:
J= 1-qN

J=1 – (1-p) N

 It is therefore the risk that a structure may fail in any one of the next N
years
Example 1
Given that the useful life of N of a structure is 100 years, what is the risk
of adopting the Tr of 100 years and Tr of 1000years

Example 2
A dam has an expected life of 25 years, and is designed for a peak flood of
100 years return period. Estimate the risk of failure of this dam. If a risk of
12.5% is acceptable, what should be the return period for it?
Determination of Recurrence Interval Tr:

• The rainfall data is from a record of n years is arranged in

descending order of magnitude

• Each rainfall record is given a rank m .

(The rank is the position of the record in the series. Hence the highest
rainfall will have the rank m=1 and the second highest, m=2 and the
lowest m=n.)
• Using Weibull (1939) formula, the recurrence interval Tr
for any rainfall record of the rank m is given as:

Read about the California method and the Hazen’s

method of determination of return period
• If two storms have the same magnitude, consider the
larger value of m to compute Tr

• Subsequently the probability and frequency can also be

determined

P= , f = 100p
• The computed values of the recurrence interval can be used to obtain a
probability plot.

• Usually a semi log graph paper is used to plot the rainfall magnitude and the
corresponding recurrence interval.

• The rainfall is plotted on the natural scale as the ordinate and the recurrence
interval on the logarithmic scale.

• The plot can be extrapolated to determine the recurrence interval of rainfall of a

greater magnitude.
Example:

The maximum values of 24 hour rainfall for 30 years from 1951 to 1980
expressed in mm are given below. Estimate the maximum 24 hour
rainfall having recurrence intervals of :

i)10 years

ii) 40 years
1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960
130 114 158 132 125 115 171 164 159 197
1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970
118 129 136 206 240 111 165 138 156 147
1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
126 132 142 151 134 154 172 181 193 187
A. Intensity–Duration Curve:
• The greater the intensity of rainfall, the shorter the duration of rain fall.

• Very intense storms occur for a short duration and as the duration of
the storm increases, its intensity decreases.

• An intensity-duration curve is obtained by plotting the rainfall intensity

(cm/hour) against duration of the storm in hours or minutes.
• Rainfall intensity (i) varies inversely with duration (t)

 Talbot’s formula is applicable for storms of duration 5 to 120 minutes.

i=
a and b are constants that are obtained from plotting given data on a log-log plot.

 Sherman Formula is used for storms of duration greater than 2 hours

i=
n is a constant
B. Intensity-Duration-Frequency Curves

• Changes in the hydrologic cycle due to increase in greenhouse gases cause

variations in intensity, duration, and frequency of precipitation events.

• An Intensity-Duration-Frequency curve (IDF Curve) is a graphical

representation of the probability that a given average rainfall intensity will
occur.

• The curve that shows the inter-dependency between i (cm/hr), duration (hour)
and Tr (year)
• An IDF curve is created with long term rainfall records collected at a
rainfall monitoring station.

• High rainfall intensity indicates that it’s raining really hard and low
intensity that it’s raining lightly.

• Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) values are very important in climate

design values for infrastructure design and water management.
The relation of an IDF curve can be expressed in general form as:
 
=

Where
– intensity (cm/hr)
– duration (hours)
T – Return Period
– are constants for a given catchment
• Each plotted line in the graph represents rainfall events with the
same probability of occurrence, in a range of durations (durations
are shown on the x-axis).

• A 10-year storm can therefore be of any duration – a 10-year 30-

min storm, a 10-year 2-hour storm or a 10-year 12-hour storm.
C. Depth-Duration-Frequency curves:

• The depth-duration-frequency curves are similar to the intensity-duration

curves but the difference is that the ordinates represent the total depth of
the rainfall instead of the rainfall intensity

• As the total depth of rainfall increases with the duration of rainfall, the
curves tend to rise.

• The total depth of rainfall for a particular duration increases with an

increase in the recurrence interval.
Depth of 25-year storm for 30-minute duration in Oklahoma. (DDF Map)
D. Depth-Area-Duration Curves:
• A storm does not produce uniform rainfall over the entire catchment.

• The storm usually has its center called the eye where precipitation is
maximum

• As the distance from the eye increases, the precipitation decreases.

• Hence the average depth of precipitation decreases as the area of the

catchment increases
The relationship is expressed as:

Where:
Ṕ– average depth in centimeters (cm) over an area, A km2
– Highest amount of rainfall in cm at the storm center
– Constants of the catchment.
Read about the preparation of the different
curves