Modeling extreme precipitation for Colorado's Front Range
Dan Cooley, Graduate Student with the University of Colorado, Boulder
To aid with the understanding of potential flooding along Colorado's Front
Range, we are producing a map of extreme precipitation return levels.
We model daily precipitation above a high threshold at 56 weather stations
with a Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD).
Each station's GPD parameters are modeled within a Bayesian
hierarchical structure allowing us to pool all the stations into one
model. In addition, the model estimates regression coefficients and
spatial parameters which are then used to interpolate for the entire
region.
In addition to aiding flood planning, this model
provides meteorological insight to how extreme precipitation behaves for
this diverse geographical region.
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