I would like to share that our latest article has been published. In our work, entitled “Developing Intensity, Duration and Frequency (IDF) curves using sub-daily gridded and in situ datasets: characterising precipitation extremes in a drying climate”, we address the critical challenge of estimating precipitation extremes in data-scarce regions.
In this article, we used 161 rain gauges and five hourly gridded datasets (IMERGv06B, IMERGv07B, ERA5, ERA5-Land, CMORPH-CDR) to generate consistent IDF curves across continental Chile. We assessed trends in annual maximum intensities (Imax) and evaluated the impact of data length under both stationary and non-stationary assumptions.
Key Findings
Our analysis shows that the spatial pattern of mean annual precipitation differs from that of Imax. Precipitation increases southward, whereas Imax peaks in Central-Southern Chile. Furthermore, we found a strong longitudinal gradient where Imax increases significantly from the intermediate depression to the Andes. This confirms that intensities measured in low-lying areas, typical of current design manuals, are not representative of Imax in the Andes.
In Central Chile, all products showed either significant decreases in Imax or no detectable trends. Crucially, our results suggest that for this study area, the choice between stationary and non-stationary approaches does not significantly affect Imax estimation, as even locations with significant trends showed minimal differences between the two models.
Bridging Research and Practice
These results underscore the need for high-resolution spatial data in hydrological planning. To bridge the gap between research and practice, we launched an open web platform making these results instantly available to the community.
- 🌐 Explore the platform: curvasIDF.cl
- 📄 Read the full article: Link to Paper
Authors: Cristóbal Soto-Escobar, Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini, Violeta Tolorza and René Garreaud.