B1763
Title: Narrowing the gap between theory and practice for modelling rainfall extremes
Authors: Kate Saunders - QUT (Australia) [presenting]
Abstract: The challenge for modelling rainfall extremes using many extreme value methods is that there exists a gap between the theory and how reliably the theory is representing the true physical process. Of particular concern here is the common practice of separating the bulk of the data from the exceedances to fit models of extreme rainfall. In a univariate context, this might be acceptable, but as extreme value theory methods evolve to support spatial-temporal approaches to modelling rainfall extremes, continuing to ignore the bulk of the data may result in unintended consequences. The most concerning is that we may fail to reliably estimate the risk posed by extreme rainfall events. We consider inter-disciplinary perspectives on modelling rainfall extremes and explore where the methods in extreme value theory need to evolve to meet the needs of the application. We consider domain knowledge from the compound event community, data science community and climate community, and discuss how this domain knowledge can be used to build extreme value models that more reliably represent the risk posed by extreme rainfall events.
