Temporal variability of precipitation extremes in Estonia 1961–2008*

Daily precipitation data from 40 stations are used to investigate the temporal variability of precipitation extremes in Estonia. The period covered is 1961–2008, characterized by a uniformity of observational practice. Precipitation extremes are quantified by yearly and seasonal values of two different parameters: daycount indices based on 95th and 99th percentile thresholds. Trend significance was assessed with the Mann-Kendall test. Results show that the frequency of both indices has increased. No significant negative trends were found. An increase of 15.8 events over the 99th percentile per decade was observed for Estonia. The indices selected for this study may be called ‘soft’ climate extremes, but the number of such events is large enough to allow for meaningful trend analysis in a roughly half-century long time series.