An analysis of Mauritian winter rainfall

Abstract

Long-term winter rainfall records for twelve stations from various sectors of Mauritius have been subjected to basic statistical analysis and spectral analysis. Three cyclone-free months, June-August, have been examined for this first study. Cyclone season rainfall will be the subject of a second paper. It is observed that the drier areas exhibit more variability in rainfall. The wet winters were around the years 1885, 1909, 1926-27, 1939-40, 1951-54, 1961-62 and 1972. The dry winters were around 1883-84, 188ti, 1902-03, 1915-16, 1921-23, 1942-48 and 1956-57. Three stations show the presence of a rather strong element of simple Markov persistence. Spectral analysis reveals that the data do contain spectral peaks, but very few are significant at the 95% level. However, it is interesting to note that the periodicities in the ranges of slightly over 2 years, 3 to 4 years, 10 to 13 years and 16 to 20 years are comparable to the results obtained by other investigators.