Phenomenological features of precipitation series in agricultural regions

Abstract

A region in central Macedonia of northern Greece is used for the analysis, where the availability of water is mandatory for the agricultural activities of the region. Seven stations are employed with a 10-year record of daily rainfall depths. At first, composite correlation diagrams are used, which justify the regional and spatial homogeneity of the data sets. Temporal characteristics of the rainfall data have shown that the majority of days throughout the year are without rain for all the stations using either mean annual or monthly rain occurrences. Similarly, the small rainfall amounts constitute the majority of the rainy cases. Moreover, harmonic analysis of the annual variation of rain occurrences is attempted using 5-day values of rainfall depths. The five strongest harmonics are presented along with phases, amplitudes, temporal cycles and total variance explained. -from Authors