Simple Scaling of Extreme Precipitation Regime in Senegal

Extreme precipitation exhibits high temporal and spatial variability, and understanding this variability is crucial for designing hydraulic infrastructures and assessing the impacts of natural risks such as floods and droughts. The Simple Scaling (SS) model, which describes the dependence of extreme rainfall statistics on timescales, is used to estimate Intensity Duration Frequency (IDF) curves. This study aims to evaluate the validity of the Simple Scaling (SS) hypothesis for 14 rain gauges in Senegal and explore the existence of breaks in temporal scaling regimes (transition regimes). For the analysis of extreme characteristics, we considered the Annual Maximum Series (AMS) of precipitation in sub-hourly and supra-daily durations ranging from 10 min to 7 days. The empirical validation of the SS models was confirmed for the majority of the scaling intervals. We identified two scaling breaks, indicating the presence of three scaling regimes: short durations (SD), intermediate durations (ID), and long durations (LD). The spatial variation of scaling exponents reveals the existence of different scaling regimes across Senegal. The results are valuable for modeling the spatial distribution of scaling exponents, which can aid in characterizing IDF curves at ungauged locations.