Abstract

Using data from the Praça Mauá meteorological station located on Rio de Janeiro (Latitude: -22.88, Longitude: -43.18, Altitude: 11.10m), twelve histograms and normal probability plots were obtained utilizing all available historical data for each month, between the years of 1961 and 2013. The normality of the distributions was evaluated using the Shapiro-Wilk test. From these results a profile for each month’s and season’s distribution patterns was obtained. This, in turn, may complement the current understanding of the intense rain events approached in other studies using the method of searching for intensity, duration and frequency curves (IDF) for the city of Rio de Janeiro, especially for the cases of urban infrastructure planning associated with hydrological and hydraulic dimensioning studies. Gaussian-like distributions were observed for all seasons separately, and for the months of May, October, November and December individually. Spearman and Pearson tests showed positive correlations, in some cases, between total precipitations for each season throughout the historical series.

Keywords: Total precipitation; Historical average; Normality