Dr. Christian Franzke

University of Hamburg

10:00 Sept 4, 2019

Room 319, Building 40, IAP

Abstract:

Precipitation is an important meteorological variable which is critical for weather risk assessment. For instance, intense but short precipitation events can lead to flash floods and landslides. Most statistical modeling studies assume that the occurrence of precipitation events is based on a Poisson process with exponentially distributed waiting times while precipitation intensities are typically described by a gamma distribution or a mixture of two exponential distributions. Here, I show by using hourly precipitation data over the United Sates that the waiting time between precipitation events is non-exponentially distributed and best described by a fractional Poisson process. I also show how to modeling spatial precipitation extremes. I will also discuss how well regional climate models reproduce those extremes.