Heavy tail behaviour of rainfall extremes across Germany

The upper part of a probability distribution (or right tail) control the extent and the frequency of occurrence of extreme events. Studying the tail behaviour of extreme rainfall events has become an important task in the estimation of these events. The main goal of this research is to characterize the regime of severe rainfall events, and to identify the morphological and climatic variables that influence the most these events. The study is based on data coming from 1206 rain gauges across Germany that recorded daily rainfall depth for the amazing period of 110 years, which allowed a fair assessment of the upper tail behaviour. The upper tail behaviour is evaluated through six estimated parameters used as tail indicators. The information provided by these descriptors were analysed by two multivariate techniques, namely the principal component analysis and the cluster analysis that ultimately returned a grouping of stations based on their upper tail behaviour.