Extreme rainfall events and flooding along the coastal area of Civitavecchia

This study is a part of wider research that aims to analyze the historical series of precipitation fallen along Latian coast, in the context of climate change. In particular, we focused on extreme rainfall events that may produce local flash flood events to the northern Latian coast from Civitavecchia to Santa Marinella. Daily rainfall data were analyzed from 1951 to 2009 for the Civitavecchia meteorological station. We focused on the extreme values following two approaches: the first one is based on the maximum annual daily rainfall series (1-day, 2-day and 3-day) for which suitable probability distributions are fitted, the second one is based on the series of peaks over annual thresholds (POT) for which the best fitting distribution is identified. The aim of this analysis is to estimate the return levels for various return periods.