Changes in Saxon Precipitation Characteristics

Trends of Extreme Precipitation and Drought

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Changes in regional precipitation pattern as well as in daily, monthly and seasonal precipitation extremes were analysed for more than 100 rain gauge stations in Saxony, Germany and surrounding areas. Trend analysis was done for a variety of heavy precipitation and drought indicators. The results were compared for study periods of different length like 1951—2000 and 1901—2006 and of varying digital data availability. Usually, the trends of dry and wet precipitation extremes are simi-lar to the general precipitation trends. Drought events increased during the summer half of the year (April to September), while wet extremes got more frequent and se-vere in the winter half year. Trends opposite to those of average precipitation like the slight increase of heavy precipitation events in summer were mainly noticed for indicators of more extreme and thus particularly rare events. Nevertheless, those tendencies are generally less robust and significant. The spatio-temporal (trend) patterns of individual indicators suggest dependencies of and changes in large scale circulation pattern.