Determining the extremes of precipitation volumes based on the modified “Peaks over Threshold” method

The problem of correct determination of extreme observations is very important when studying meteorological phenomena. The paper proposes ascending and descending methods for finding the threshold for extremes based on the Rényi theorem for thinning flows and the Pikands–Balkema–De Haan results. Using the observation data for 60 years for Potsdam and Elista, it is demonstrated that the ascending method can present excellent results for daily precipitation but for volumes of wet periods, the descending method should be used. The results of such nonparametric approaches are compared with the parametric criterion proposed in the previous papers by the authors.