Statistical Variability of Severe Rainfall Events in Southeastern Brazil

Overview & Synopsis

Extreme rainfall events are one of the natural phenomena that cause more damages. These events are known to be well localized, especially in tropical and subtropical climate regions such as southeastern Brazil. These events have high heterogeneity and the evolution of rain cells changes is quick, the forecast and knowledge of these extreme rainfall events still represent a challenge for the scientific community, such as the spatial variability of rainfall. For this, data from the weather radar installed in Campinas city were used, which generates new radar images every 10 minutes, and data from twenty-nine rain gauges located in the region. For this, 16 rainfall events were selected, located in the region of Campinas/SP, southeast of Brazil, a region that has already recorded many events. For this study, rain and intermittent zones were analyzed separately. This study helps to understand the main statistical characteristics of severe events, mainly located in the region of Campinas. In addition, the information extracted and the analyzes carried out in this study can be used as input data for models that generate possible rainfall scenarios, ensembles, such as, methods based on geostatistics or machine learning.