Abstract
In most regions of the world, increased risk of extreme rainfall is identified as one of the most serious hazards, culminating in major flooding catastrophes that have resulted in losses of huge property and human life. As the frequency of extreme flash flood occurrences in Somalia has recently increased, this investigation focuses on modeling monthly extreme rainfall in Somalia during a 116-year period from 1901 to 2016 using a generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution, generalized Pareto distribution (GPD), r largest order statistics, and point process (PP) characterization. Negative log-likelihood, Akaike Information Criteria (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC) were applied to find out the optimal model for analyzing maximum rainfall in Somalia. The findings illustrate that GEV distribution with parameters location 60.354, scale 18.019 and shape 0.109 is the best fit model for Somalia. Accordingly, the return level estimates indicate that the average annual intense rainfalls could exceed up to 218 mm, 237 mm and 379 mm once every 75, 100 and 500 years, respectively. These return level estimates produce good results when it comes to estimating magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall. Furthermore, the probability plot show that fitted values are quite close the majority of rainfall data points. As a result, GEV is the best-fit distribution for modeling magnitude and frequency of heavy rainfalls in Somalia. This efficient model can help policy makers manage and mitigate risks associated with probable extreme rainfall events as well as plan, design and manage hydraulic structures.
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The data that support the findings of this study are publicy available in Climate Knowledge Portal of the World Bank Group at https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org.
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The code that supports the findings of this study is available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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All authors contributed to the preparation of the manuscript. JM performed data collection, analysis and first draft preparation. MBA reviewed and commented on the first draft. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Mohamed, J., Adam, M.B. Modeling of magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall in Somalia. Model. Earth Syst. Environ. 8, 4277–4294 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-022-01363-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-022-01363-0