Variability and Trend in Seasonal Precipitation in the Continental United States
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 18, Issue 6
Abstract
Using 92-year precipitation data from 400 rain gauge stations located in 48 states throughout the continental United States, the change in precipitation in space and time was investigated. The variability in precipitation was investigated using an entropy-based approach. The Mann-Kendall, Spearman’s rho, and Sen slope tests were applied to assess the existence of a trend in precipitation. Analysis showed that annual precipitation exhibited lower temporal variability than did its constituent seasonal series. The fall precipitation had the highest variability, and the spring precipitation the lowest. Not many stations exhibited trends, and they are concentrated in limited areas of the United States. The greatest part of those exhibiting statistically significant trends showed increasing trends both in precipitation and rainy days. Only in a few cases negative trends were found. Finally, analysis showed that no relationship can be established between trend and variability in precipitation.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the editor, associate editor, and the anonymous reviewers who provided useful comments that have significantly improved the paper.
References
Brauner, S. (1997). “Environmental sampling & monitoring primer, nonparametric estimation of slope: Sen’S method in environmental pollution.” 〈www.cee.vt.edu/ewr/environmental〉 (Jan. 2011).
Englehart, P. J., and Douglas, A. V. (1985). “A statistical analysis of precipitation frequency in the conterminous United States, including comparisons with precipitation totals.” J. Clim. Appl. Meteor., 24(4), 350–362.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (2007). “Fourth assessment report: Climate change 2007 (AR4).” World Meteorological Organization, Geneva.
Karl, T. R., and Knight, R. W. (1998). “Secular trends of precipitation amount, frequency, and intensity in the united states.” Bull. Am. Meteor. Soc., 79(2), 231–241.
Kendall, M. G. (1975). Rank correlation methods, Charles Griffin, London.
Lettenmaier, D. P., Wood, E. F., and Wallis, J. R. (1994). “Hydro-climatological trends in the continental United States, 1948–1988.” J. Climate, 7(4), 586–607.
Mann, H. B. (1945). “Nonparametric tests against trend.” Econometrica, 13(3), 245–259.
Mann, M. E., and Park, J. (1993). “Spatial correlations of interdecadal variation in global surface temperatures.” Geophys. Res. Lett., 20(11), 1055–1058.
Mann, M. E., and Park, J. (1994). “Global-scale modes of surface temperature variability on interannual to century timescales.” J. Geophys. Res., 99(D12), 25819–25833.
McGuirk, J. P. (1982). “A century of precipitation variability along the Pacific coast of north america and its impact.” Climatic Change, 4(1), 41–56.
Mearns, L., Giorgi, F., McDaniel, L., and Shields, C. (1995). “Analysis of daily variability of precipitation in a nested regional climate model—comparison with observations and doubled results.” Global Planet. Change, 10(1–4), 55–78.
Menne, M. J., Williams, C. N., Jr., and Vose, R. S. (2010). “Long-term daily and monthly climate records from stations across the contiguous United States.” National Climatic Data Center, 〈http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/background.html〉 (Jan. 2011).
Mishra, A. K., Ozger, M., and Singh, V. P. (2009). “An entropy-based investigation into the variability of precipitation.” J. Hydrol., 370(1–4), 139–154.
Mishra, A. K., Ozger, M., and Singh, V. P. (2011). “Association between uncertainties in meteorological variables and water-resources planning for the state of Texas.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 16, 984–999.
Mitchell, J. M., Jr. (1963). “On the world-wide pattern of secular temperature change.” Proc., Rome Symp. Organized by UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization, 1961, UNESCO, Paris, 161–181.
NationalAtlas.gov. (2008). “Precipitation of the individual states and of the conterminous states.” 〈http://www.nationalatlas.gov/printable/precipitation.html〉 (Jan. 2011).
National Climatic Data Center. (2007). “Tornado climatology.” 〈http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html〉 (Jan. 2011).
Peel, M. C., Finlayson, B. L., and McMahon, T. A. (2007). “Updated world map of the Koppen-Geiger climate classification.” Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 11(5), 1633–1644.
Rajagopalan, B., and Lall, U. (1998). “Interannual variability in western us precipitation.” J. Hydrol., 210(1–4), 51–67.
Sen, P. K. (1968). “Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall’s tau.” J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 63(324), 1379–1389.
Shannon, C. E. (1948). “A mathematical theory of communication.” Bell. Syst. Tech. J., 27(7), 379–423.
Singh, V. P. (2011). “Hydrologic synthesis using entropy theory: Review.” J. Hydrol. Eng., 16(5), 421–433.
Small, D., and Islam, S. (2008). “Low frequency variability in fall precipitation across the United States.” Water Resour. Res., 44(4), W04426.
Spearman, C. (1906). “A footrule for measuring correlation.” Br. J. Psychol., 2(1), 89–108.
Yu, B., and Neil, D. T. (1991). “Global warming and regional rainfall: the difference between average and high intensity rainfalls.” Int. J. Climatol., 11(6), 653–661.
Zhou, K. Y., Tan, X. M., and Wang, L. X. (2003). “Study on the historical evolution of water environment in the Hai River basin.” Special Seminar: Hydraulics in Antiquity. 30th IAHR Congress, Aristoteleio Panepistimio Thessalonikis, Thessaloniki, Greece, 31–38.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 11, 2011
Accepted: Jun 22, 2012
Published online: Aug 4, 2012
Published in print: Jun 1, 2013
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.