Statistical Analysis of Extreme Rainfall Data in Baghdad City

Abstract

Studying extreme precipitation is very important in Iraq. In particular, the last decade witnessed an increasing trend in extreme precipitation as the climate change. Some of which caused a disastrous consequences on social and economic environment in many parts of the country. In this paper a statistical analysis of rainfall data is performed. Annual maximum rainfall data obtained from monthly records for a period of 127 years (1887-2013 inclusive) at Baghdad metrology station have been analyzed. The three distributions chosen to fit the data were Gumbel, Fréchet and the generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. Using the maximum likelihood method, results showed that the GEV distribution was the best followed by Fréchet distribution.