Application of radar data to estimate distributed return periods of extreme rainfall events over Trondheim

Abstract

The return period of a given rainfall intensity is an important parameter for the Trondheim municipality since the drainage systems in Trondheim have been and are still being designed on the basis of a selected return period. Since rainfall is a spatially distributed phenomenon, a single event passing over a city can yield different return periods at different locations in the same city. In order to account for this spatial variability, a tool has been developed in this project for determining distributed return periods for rainfall events over Trondheim using the measurements from Rissa radar. The tool includes a method for adjusting radar rainfall using rain gauge measurements and an accumulation technique which accounts for storm movement and temporal variation in intensity. The tool has been tested on two extreme events which occurred on July 29 2007 and August 13 2007. The application on the two events has demonstrated a fully-automated estimation of distributed return periods using readily available data. For the particular rain gauge network in Trondheim, it has also been shown how areas of maximum intensity observed by the radar can be missed by all the gauges.