Biases in Estimating Long-Term Recurrence Intervals of Extreme Events Due To Regionalized Sampling

Preparing for environmental risks requires estimating the frequencies of extreme events, often from data records that are too short to confirm them directly. This requires fitting a statistical distribution to the data. To improve precision, investigators often pool data from neighboring sites into single samples, referred to as superstations, before fitting. We demonstrate that this technique can introduce unexpected biases in typical situations, using wind and rainfall extremes as case studies. When the combined locations have even small differences in the underlying statistics, the regionalization approach gives a fit that may tend toward the highest levels suggested by any of the individual sites. This bias may be large or small compared to the sampling error, for realistic record lengths, depending on the distribution of the quantity analyzed. The results of this analysis indicate that previous analyses could potentially have overestimated the likelihood of extreme events arising from natural weather variability.

Automated summary

Preparing for environmental risks requires estimating the frequencies of extreme events, often from data records that are too short to confirm them directly. Fitting a statistical distribution to the data is necessary, but pooling data from neighboring sites into single samples can introduce unexpected biases in typical situations. Previous analyses may have overestimated the likelihood of extreme events arising from natural weather variability.