Statistical analyses of extreme rainfall events in Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract Concern about climate change has amplified the need for accurate information about variations in statistical characteristics of extreme rainfall events in both smaller temporal and spatial scale. For this reason, in this paper the hourly precipitation measurements obtained at the Department of Meteorology and Climatology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki meteorological station, during the period 1947–2003, are used. A new threshold determining method is proposed, in order to define the extreme rainfall event in Thessaloniki, based upon the polynomial trends of the cumulative distribution functions, retrieved from hourly precipitation measurements. Through this approach, three statistical goodness-of-fit tests were carried out, in order to come up with the best fitting probability distributions, for annual and seasonal extreme precipitation conditions. Based upon this fitting distribution procedure, return periods for different precipitation extreme values were calculated. Results indicate that the value of 6.5 mm/h is the hourly threshold of extreme precipitation in Thessaloniki over the studied period. Furthermore, the Generalized Pareto, and the Johnson SB, the log-Gamma and the Lognormal are the best fitted probability models for the description of annual and seasonal extreme rainfall events, respectively. Last but not least, the contribution of hourly data in the accuracy of the results is discussed.