Short Communication

Modelling of rainfall occurrences at Grootfontein (Karoo, South Africa)

Published in: South African Journal of Plant and Soil
Volume 22 , issue 2 , 2005 , pages: 127–128

DOI: 10.1080/02571862.2005.10634694

Author(s): J.C. Venter Department of Soil, South Africa , M.T. Mebrhatu Department of Soil, South Africa

Keywords: Markov chains , simulation , weather generators

Abstract

The modelling approach that was followed in this study makes use of a record of daily rainfall, dealing with seasonality by partitioning the year into a number of approximately homogeneous ‘seasons’. The capabilities of two models to preserve various observed statistics of March rainfall at the study site, were considered. The outputs of both were found to compare well with observation, one of the models (the first-order Markov chain) being marginally better than the other.

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