Daily and hourly rainfall distribution in space and time – conditions in southern Sweden

Abstract

Very extreme events occur randomly in space and in time. In this paper daily precipitation from more than 200 stations within a 10 000 km2 region in the very south of Sweden is analysed. While there is a relation between moderate daily precipitation and annual precipitation, the most extreme events are found to be independent of annual precipitation and also of altitude and distance to the sea. The most extreme events are distributed evenly over the region. Variations of the climate are considered. For three cities daily storms are analysed for a period of 89 years. No trend over time is found of the daily high precipitation. Hourly storms are analysed for four stations within the city of Malmö. The probability of concurrent events is rather high, but there is little correlation between the rain intensities at the different stations during the most intense events.