[1] This paper examines the effect of hyetograph shape on the potential for landsliding in soil-mantled landscapes. An existing pore pressure response model (Iverson, 2000) is used to study the effects of unsteady rainfall infiltration in hillslopes, and the effect of slope and convergent topography is expressed using a steady state model of slope-parallel subsurface flow. Slope stability is as...

This study examines the spatial and temporal variability of monthly total rainfall data obtained from weather stations located in the urban areas of Kuwait. The rainfall data are analyzed by considering statistics on a seasonal basis and by means of periodogram technique to reveal the periods responsible for the variable pattern. The results demonstrate similarity implying that a point estimate...

Since raingauges give pointwise measurements the small scale variability of rainfall fields leads to biases on the estimation for the rainfall over the whole basin. In this context meteorological radars have several advantages since a single site is able to obtain coverage over a wide area with high temporal and spatial resolution. The purpose of this study is to compare the capability of the t...

Summer rainfall in the Sahel region of Africa exhibits one of the largest signals of climatic variability and with a population reliant on agricultural productivity, the Sahel is particularly vulnerable to major droughts such as occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Rainfall levels have subsequently recovered, but future projections remain uncertain. Here we show that Sahel rainfall is skilfully pre...

In the 1980s, there were numerous claims, based on estimates of the correlation dimension, that the variability of various geophysical processes, in particular rainfall, is generated by a low-dimensional deterministic chaos. Due to a recent attempt (Sivakumar et ai, 2001) to revive the same approach and with claims of an analogous result for the rainfall-runoff process, we think it is necessary...

[1] In the early 1990s a cluster of extreme flood events occurred in the south Galway region of western Ireland, and this led to speculation of changing rainfall patterns in the area. In this paper we illustrate the use of generalized linear models (GLMs) to test for such changes and quantify their structure. GLMs, long established in the statistical literature, provide a flexible and rigorous ...

This study set out to investigate the trends of agriculturally-relevant rainfall characteristics among small-scale farmers in the rainfall-sensitive dry savanna agro-ecological zone of northern Ghana. Interviews are used to identify characteristics of rainfall which are deemed by the farmers as important in their food production. Time series daily rainfall data from 1960-2007 is then used to id...

The resurrection plant Reaumuria soongorica is widespread across Asia, southern Europe, and North Africa and is considered to be a constructive keystone species in desert ecosystems, but the impacts of climate change on this species in desert ecosystems are unclear. Here, the morphological responses of R. soongorica to changes in rainfall quantity (30% reduction and 30% increase in rainfall qua...