Comparison of rain gauge observations with modeled precipitation over Cyprus using contiguous rain area analysis

Verification of modeled rainfall with precipitation observed by a rain gauge network has been performed in a case study over the Cyprus Island. Cyprus has a relatively dense rain gauge network. The applied verification method is the Contiguous Rain Area (CRA) analysis. In this work some drawbacks are pointed out when CRA method is applied in such a case study. Impact on CRA results, when considering different dimensions of the compared model domain and different types of indicators (correlation and mean square error) used in the comparison, are discussed. Results indicate that care has to be taken when verification of modeled rainfall is performed over some of islands or hydrological basins.