On the coincidence of extreme rainfall bursts with duration

Abstract

Subdaily, annual maximum rainfall series from a number of locations about Australia are analysed to determine how extreme bursts at one duration coincide with those at another duration. Burst patterns for sites at Darwin and Perth are selected for more detailed investigation. A variety of plots and numerical summaries are presented to show that there is significant structure and overlap between extreme bursts. These observations are relevant to the growing number of models that aim to reproduce the incidence and patterns of extreme bursts. A comparison for one such model, DRIP, is presented as an example of this application.