Modeling of occurrence and rain amount in Piracicaba

Abstract

A model to describe the daily rainfall in Piracicaba, SP, Brazil, is proposed to relate the ocurrence of rainy and rainless days, and in terms of their amount. Both, the occurrence of days without and with rain, in tems of their sequences of 31 days following a given date, can well be represented by the truncated negative binomial distribution function with its parameters adjusted to a periodic funtion with the first two harmonics. The amount of rain was well described by the gamma distribution; the shape parameter (gamma) remaining constant but the scale parameter (beta) had a periodic variation which could be represented by a periodic function with two harmonics. Analysis of the data shows that the rainfall series for Piracicaba (1917 to 1944 and 1945 to 1989) can be considered omogeneus, even though the weather station had been moved from its original location.