Best fitting of probability distributions for monthly and annual maximum rainfall prediction in Junagadh region (Gujarat-India)

Rain is a meager and crucial hydrological variable in arid and semi-arid region. Junagadh (Gujarat -India) reels under monsoon rainfall uncertainties and thereby the agriculture and other water resources management activities suffer. Therefore, urgent attention is needed to address water resources conservation and crop damage issues due to deficits or excess rainfall. Water resources development of any locality depends on amount of runoff generated and rainfall received. Appropriate probability distributions need to be selected and fitted to the historical time series of rainfall for better frequency analysis and forecasting of the rainfall. The daily rainfall data was collected for a period of 38 years, i.e., from 1984 to 2021. This research attempts to fit eight different theoretical probability distributions to the monthly and annual maximum rainfall for one to five consecutive days to select the best one for the better prediction of maximum rainfall. For determination of goodness of fit Chi-Square and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency were carried out by comparing the expected values with the observed values. The results indicated that the Gumbel distribution emerged to be the best fit for the prediction of monthly and annual maximum rainfall of Junagadh Region.