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Nicholas R. Cavanaugh

Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-015-2517-1): Daily precipitation variability as observed from weather stations is heavy tailed at most locations around the world. It is thought that diversity in precipitation-causing weather events is fundamental in producing heavy-tailed distributions, and it arises from theory that at least one of the precipitation types contributing to a heavy-tailed climatological record must also be heavy-tailed. Precipitation is a multi-scale phenomenon with a rich spatial structure and short decorrelation length and timescales; the spatiotemporal scale at which precipitation is observed is thus an important factor when considering its statistics and extremes....
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL063238/pdf): The probability tail structure of over 22,000 weather stations globally is examined in order to identify the physically and mathematically consistent distribution type for modeling the probability of intense daily precipitation and extremes. Results indicate that when aggregating data annually, most locations are to be considered heavy tailed with statistical significance. When aggregating data by season, it becomes evident that the thickness of the probability tail is related to the variability in precipitation causing events and thus that the fundamental cause of precipitation volatility is weather diversity. These results have both theoretical...
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