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Profile photo of Ronny Berndtsson

Ronny Berndtsson

Professor, Dep Director, MECW Dep Scientific Coordinator

Profile photo of Ronny Berndtsson

Regionalizing short-term rainfall affected by topography in semiarid Tunisia

Author

  • Sihem Jebari
  • Ronny Berndtsson
  • Cintia Bertacchi Uvo
  • A Bahri

Summary, in English

The characteristics of fine time-scale rainfall are important in many hydrological applications, such as infiltration, erosion and flooding. The spatial properties of such rainfall are, however, seldom known, especially for arid and semi-arid areas. A better knowledge of fine time-scale rainfall and also comparison with daily rainfall may yield possibilities for disaggregation. For this purpose, rainfall data of different time scales, from 1-min to daily, from 25 stations during four years (1995–1998), were spatially analysed by means of spatial correlation, empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and hierarchical clustering. The results show that the spatial correlation is typically non-isotropic and varying, depending on topography and local meteorological settings. Similarly, spatial patterns of EOF are closely related to main atmospheric synoptic situations as influenced by orography and spatial dependence regarding areas with predominant convective and frontal rainfall. The clustering displayed different homogeneous sub-groups over the Tunisian Dorsal Mountains that can be used to better manage the limited water resources that often depend on fine time-scale rainfall variability.

Department/s

  • Division of Water Resources Engineering
  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)

Publishing year

2007

Language

English

Pages

1199-1215

Publication/Series

Hydrological Sciences Journal

Volume

52

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Topic

  • Water Engineering

Keywords

  • daily rainfall
  • multivariate analysis
  • regionalization
  • semi-arid
  • Tunisia
  • fine time-scale rainfall
  • spatial rainfall patterns

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0262-6667