A Brief Introduction to the Concept of Return Period for Univariate Variables

Abstract

Here the concept of return period is discussed in terms of the stationarity of the process. If the process is stationarity the concept of return period is well defined and ambiguities do not arise. If the process is non stationary, as it could be any climate driven phenomenon under climate change assumption, the meaning of the return period varies because it could be read in a more or a less conservative way. In this work, we refer to the three possible alternatives of non stationary return period concept given in.

Keywords: definition, stationarity, non-stationarity, univariate, return period