Detecting trends of extreme rainfall series in Sicily

Abstract

The objective of the study is to assess the presence of linear and non linear trends in annual maximum rainfall series of different durations observed in Sicily. In particular, annual maximum rainfall series with at least 50 years of records starting from the 1920's are selected, and for each duration (1, 3, 6, 12 and 24h) the Student's t test and the Mann-Kendall test, respectively, for linear and non linear trend detection, are applied also by means of bootstrap techniques. The effect of trend on the assessment of the return period of a critical event is also analysed. In particular, return periods related to a storm, recently occurred along the East Coast of Sicily, are computed by estimating parameters based on several sub-series extracted from the whole observation period. Such return period estimates are also compared with confidence intervals computed by bootstrap. Results indicate that for shorter durations, the investigated series generally exhibit increasing trends while as longer durations are considered, more and more series exhibit decreasing trends.