@article{fdi:010060669,
  title = {{F}rom pointwise testing to a regional vision : an integrated statistical approach to detect nonstationarity in extreme daily rainfall. {A}pplication to the {S}ahelian region},
  author = {{P}anthou, {G}{\'e}r{\'e}my and {V}ischel, {T}. and {L}ebel, {T}hierry and {Q}uantin, {G}. and {P}ugin, {A}. {C}. {F}. and {B}lanchet, {J}. and {A}li, {A}.},
  editor = {},
  language = {{ENG}},
  abstract = {{G}lobal warming is expected to intensify the hydrologic cycle. {D}ocumenting whether significant changes in the extreme precipitation regimes have already happened is consequently one of the challenging topics in climatic research. {T}he high natural variability of extreme precipitation often prevents from obtaining significant results when testing changes in the empirical distribution of extreme rainfall at regional scale. {A} regional integrated approach is proposed here as one possible answer to this complex methodological problem. {T}hree methods are combined in order to detect regionally significant trends and/or breakpoints in series of annual maximum daily rainfall: (1) individual stationarity tests applied to the raw point series of maxima, (2) a maximum likelihood testing of time-dependent generalized extreme value ({GEV}) distributions fitted to these series, and (3) a heuristic testing of a regional time-dependent {GEV} distribution. {T}his approach is applied to a set of 126 daily rain gauges covering the {S}ahel over the period 1950-1990. {I}t is found that only a few stations are tested as nonstationary when applying classical tests on the raw series, while the two {GEV}-based models converge to show that the extreme rainfall series indeed underwent a negative breakpoint around 1970. {T}he study evidences the limits of the widely used classical stationarity tests to detect trends in noisy series affected by sampling uncertainties, while using a parametric space and time-dependent {GEV} efficiently reduces this effect. {S}howing that the great {S}ahelian drought was accompanied by a significant decrease of extreme rainfall events is the other main result of this study.},
  keywords = {extreme daily rainfall ; {GEV} ; non-stationarity ; trends ; break-point ; tests ; {S}ahel ; {SAHEL}},
  booktitle = {},
  journal = {{J}ournal of {G}eophysical {R}esearch.{A}tmospheres},
  volume = {118},
  numero = {15},
  pages = {8222--8237},
  ISSN = {2169-897{X}},
  year = {2013},
  DOI = {10.1002/jgrd.50340},
  URL = {https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010060669},
}