Maximum daily rainfall in South Korea

Annual maxima of daily rainfall for the years 1961–2001 are modeled for five locations in South Korea (chosen to give a good geographical representation of the country). The generalized extreme value distribution is fitted to data from each location to describe the extremes of rainfall and to predict its future behavior. We find evidence to suggest that the Gumbel distribution provides the most reasonable model for four of the five locations considered. We explore the possibility of trends in the data but find no evidence suggesting trends. We derive estimates of 10, 50, 100, 1000, 5000, 10,000, 50,000 and 100,000 year return levels for daily rainfall and describe how they vary with the locations. This paper provides the first application of extreme value distributions to rainfall data from South Korea.