Extreme rainfall in coastal metropolitan areas of Central Italy: Rome and Pescara case studies

Abstract

This study analyzes the historical series of precipitation fallen along Latian coast and Abruzzo coast, and extreme rainfall in the context of climate change. Daily precipitation data cover the years ranging from 1922 to 2009 for one meteorological station, and from 1951 to 2010 for five stations. We focus on the extreme values following two approaches: the first one is based on the maximum annual daily rainfall series (1-day, 2- day and 3-day) for which suitable probability distributions are fitted. The second one is based on the series of peaks over annual thresholds (POT) for which the best fitting distribution is identified. The aim of this analysis is to estimate rainfall return levels for various return periods. This is particularly helpful to the Local Administration for the urban planning and for alerting residents in metropolitan areas.