PyMTRD: A Python package for calculating the metrics of temporal rainfall distribution

Abstract

Temporal rainfall distribution facilitates the understanding of rainfall patterns at various time scales, extreme events, and corresponding water resources implications. Researchers have developed various metrics of temporal rainfall distribution but there exist no easy-to-use software packages for calculating these metrics. To address this gap, we developed the PyMTRD package, which can be conveniently used to calculate the metrics of temporal rainfall distribution and conduct rainfall pattern analysis. The metrics calculated in the package included rainfall intensity, rainfall frequency, consecutive dry days, Gini index, unranked Gini index, wet-day Gini index, precipitation concentration index, dimensionless seasonality index, and seasonality index. This paper documented our Python software development, which included the architecture design, the Application Programming Interfaces design and algorithms for calculating each metric, and also the point and global scale applications.