Dimensionless hyetographs and statistics of annual-maximum rainfall events in Great Britain, from historical rain gauge records

Rainfall event hyetographs are derived from quality-controlled rain gauge observations with sub-hourly resolution collected by the England Environment Agency (EA), Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). Each hyetograph corresponds to an Annual Maximum rainfall (AMAX) event registered at each rain gauge for durations ranging from 5-min up to 24-hr. Multiple AMAX values with different durations may map onto a single hyetograph.

The sub-hourly data was quality controlled prior to AMAX and hyetograph using methods derived for the QC of CEH-GEAR1hr and the Global Sub Daily Rainfall dataset (GSDR), as well as additional checks that leverage the sub-hourly nature of the dataset. AMAX rainfall totals for 5-, 10-, 15-, 30-min and 1-, 2-, 3-, 6-, 12-, 24-hr durations were calculated using rolling window sums. The event hyetograph for each AMAX total was then extracted from the original sub-hourly time series and converted to uniform duration series. The final dataset consists of the event time series, provided as cumulative rainfall hyetographs for each event, as well as event metadata including summary statistics and a list of associated AMAX totals.

Datasets associated with this service

Gridded estimates of hourly areal rainfall for Great Britain 1990-2016 [CEH-GEAR1hr] v2