Major Terminologies of RF data

• Hourly Rainfall : the rainfall depth in each hour

• Daily Rainfall : depth of Rainfall in 24 hour

• Decadal Rainfall : sum of 10 days rainfall

• Monthly Rainfall : sum of daily rainfall of days in a month

• Annual Rainfall : sum of monthly rainfall in a year

• Mean Daily Rainfall: The average daily rainfall over long year

• Mean monthly Rainfall : the average monthly rainfall over the long year

• Mean annual Rainfall: the average of annual rainfall over the long year

• Maximum Daily Rainfall: the maximum of the daily rainfall over the specified period

/decadal, monthly, Annual ?

 Rain fall data Presentation
- Rainfall Mass Curve: A plot showing the cumulative rainfall depth
over the storm duration

Depth
Time

-Rainfall Hyetogragh: A plot of rainfall depth or intensity with respect

to time

Depth or
Intensity
Time
- Instantaneous Rainfall Intensity, (slope of the mass curve)
dP(t)
i(t) 
dt
-Average Intensity in (t, t + t) is
P P(t  t )  P(t )
it  
t t
Mass curve of rainfall
142
Accumulated precipitation (cm)

4th Storm
1 Storm
st
2 Storm
nd
3 Storm
rd

10

1 2 3 4 5

Days
Hyetograph of a storm
0.6
Rainfall Intensity, cm/h

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0
8 16 24 32 40 48 56
Time, hours
 Mean Precipitation over an Area
• Rainfall are measure and process as a point data

• But, In practice hydrological analysis requires a

knowledge of rainfall over an area, example
catchment we use the areal data for the analysis

• Three common methods to do mean areal

rainfall
– Arithmetic mean
– Thiessen polygon
– Isohyetal
• Arithmetical – Mean Method
P1  P2  .............Pi  ......  Pn 1 N
P
N

N
P
i 1
i

Example

Ans. 2.208″
• Thiessen – Mean Method

P1 A1  P2 A2  ...  Pi Ai  ...  Pn An
P
A1  A2  ...  Ai  ...  An 
M

PA i i M
Ai
 i 1
  Pi
A i 1 A
AA

AB

AC
AD

AE
 AA = 0.25ha

AB = 0.90ha

AC = 0.85ha AD = 0.75ha

AE = 0.70ha

Ans: 2.398”
 Isohyetal Method
 P1  P2   P2  P3   Pn 1  p n 
A1    A2    ......  An 1  
 2   2   2 
P
A

Note: the Thiessen and Isohyetal methods give more

accurate information than the simple arithmetic mean.
The isohyets method is superior to the other two
methods especially when the stations are large in
number.
 0.50”

1.00”

2.00”

5.00”
4.00”
3.00”
2.00”
 Example
8 10
6
C
9.2
B
3
7.0 80 D0km
km 14 122 12
18 0k
4 A0 2 m2
20 km
km 7.2 2
2

F E
4.0 9.1 10

8
6
4
Ans: 8.844cm
Intensity – Duration -Frequency
 Frequency of Point Rainfall
• In many hydraulic-Engineering application of occurrence of a
particular extreme rainfall be important
– Example : for flood analysis purpose 24hr. Max. rainfall
• Such information is obtained by the frequency analysis of the
point rainfall data
• Annual data series is the common data use in frequency analysis

• Terminologies used in Frequency Analysis

• Probability of occurrence: the probability of occurrence of an event (rainfall) whose
magnitude is equal to or excess of specified magnitude X is denoted by P.

• Recurrence interval /return period/ : represent the average interval between the
occurrence of a rainfall of magnitude equal or greater than X defined as

T = 1/P
 Procedure of the simple empirical technique
• Arrange the given annual extreme series in
descending order
• Assign an order/rank/ number m, start from
the first to the last, which m=N= number of
years of record
• The probability P of an event equaled to or
exceeded is given by plotting
m
position, for
Weibull formula p  N  1

• The recurrence interval T = 1/P= (N+1)/m

 Intensity – Duration -Frequency
• Intensity of storms decreases with the increase in storm
duration
– A storm of any given duration will have a large intensity if its
return period is large
• In many hydraulics analysis , it is necessary to know the
rainfall intensities of different durations and different return
periods.
• The inter-dependency among intensity (i cm/hr), duration
(D hr.) and return period (T years) is commonly expressed in
a general formula x
KT
i
D  a n

where k, x, a, and n are constant for a given catchment

 Intensity-Duration-Frequency Intensity-Duration-Frequency
Regions A1 & A4 Regions A2 & A3
Figure 5-9 Figure 5-10
400

400,0
350

350,0
300

300,0

250 2 Year

Intensity, mm/hr
250,0 2 Year 5 Year
5 Year 10 Year
Intensity, mm/hr

10 Year 200 25 year

200,0 25 year 50 Year
50 Year 100 Year
150
100 Year
150,0

100
100,0

50
50,0

0
0,0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 Duration, min.
Duration, min.

Intensity-Duration-Frequency
Regions B, C & D
Figure 5-11
Intensity-Duration-Frequency
Bahir Dar & Lake Tana
400.0 Figure 5-12
400,0

350.0
350,0

300.0 300,0

2 Year
250.0 250,0 2 Year
Intensity, mm/hr
Intensity, mm/hr

5 Year 5 Year
10 Year 10 Year
200.0 25 year 200,0 25 year
50 Year
50 Year
100 Year
150.0 100 Year 150,0

100.0 100,0

50.0 50,0

0,0
0.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130
Duration, min.
Duration, min.