Probabilistic Behavior of Floods of Record in the United States
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 11, Issue 5
Abstract
Literature on the probability distribution function (PDF) of annual maximum flood discharges is extensive, yet the literature on the PDF of the flood of record (FOR) is sparse. This is partially due to two facts: (1) the PDF for record events is more complex than the PDF for annual maxima; and (2) data sets for observed FORs are much smaller than for the annual maximum flood series from which they derive. We show that, if annual floods arise from a generalized extreme values (GEV) distribution, then the FOR also arises from another GEV distribution, which we term . We also derive the moments and L-moments for the PDF of . Using record flood observations at over 1,500 basins in the United States, we compared theoretical and empirical properties of observed values of the FOR. We found that, at both regional and national scales, the FOR values are on average more extreme than would be expected if they occurred randomly, and that they tend to form spatial clusters.
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Acknowledgment
We are indebted to Nick Matalas for conversations we have had concerning a probabilistic interpretation of envelope curves because it was those early discussions which provided the inspiration for this research.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 11 • Issue 5 • September 2006
Pages: 482 - 488
Copyright
© 2006 ASCE.
History
Received: Mar 15, 2005
Accepted: Oct 25, 2005
Published online: Sep 1, 2006
Published in print: Sep 2006
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