To illustrate the capability and the kind of information
obtained from an ARI map, we show two
recent events that caused much devastation in Southeast
Asia. Figure 4 shows an extreme event caused by Typhoon
Fitow in October 2013 in the east coast of the
Zhejiang Province in China. The map of 3-day precipitation
accumulation clearly shows the heavy rain
amount along the track of Typhoon Fitow as it made
landfall. The related ARI map shows a much smaller
region where Fitow dumped over 200mm of rainfall in
three days corresponding to an ARI over 40 yr. The area
with high ARI corresponds well with the flooding area in
this newly developed wealthy province of China. One
measure of the destruction is that an estimate of 75 000
cars in the city of Ningbo alone was submerged. The
total loss was estimated to be 5.6 billion U.S. dollars.
One of the major hazards of extreme precipitation is
the potential to trigger landslides. A multiday monsoon
cloudburst centered over the northern Indian state of
Uttarakhand in mid-June 2013 caused devastating
floods and landslides in the country’s worst natural disaster
since the 2004 tsunami. Destruction of bridges and
roads left about 100 000 pilgrims and tourists trapped in
the valleys leading to three of the four Hindu Chota
Char Dham pilgrimage sites, requiring evacuation by
Indian military troops. According to figures provided by
the Uttarakhand government, more than 5700 people
were ‘‘presumed dead.’’ Figure 5 shows a large area of
heavy 3-day total precipitation accumulation across the
Himalaya mountain range near Siwalik from 15 to
17 June with pockets of more than 300-mm total rainfall.
The heavy rain caused the melting of Chorabari Glacier
at the height of 3800m and overflow of the Mandakini
River, which led to widespread floods downstream. The
ARI map highlights regions with elevated ARI with
some areas exceeding a 40-yr ARI. Additional ARI
maps produced by this approach for major landslide
events in recent years can be found in Kirschbaum et al.
(2015).