Regional Frequency Analysis of Extreme Precipitation after Drought Events in the Heihe River Basin, Northwest China
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19, Issue 6
Abstract
Regional frequency analysis of extreme precipitation after a drought event based on the L-moment method has provided promising insights into drought risk management. The drought index of continuous noneffective rainy days was applied to analyze the droughts with the characteristics of increasing frequency, severity, and duration in the Heihe River Basin. Based on the typical drought records, the precipitation intensity after drought was shown to be greater than the long-term average values. Regional pooling of the precipitation after drought and under normal conditions for 1960–2010 from 14 sites across the Heihe River Basin was applied in a regional frequency analysis based on L-moments to estimate the quantiles for given return-period precipitation events in each of the three homogeneous regions for both the drought and normal series. From the study results, the following observations were made: (1) the Heihe River Basin (14 sites) can be classified into three homogeneous regions by the analysis of discordancy measure and heterogeneity measure. The results of goodness-of-fit measures showed that the Pearson type III (PE3) and generalized extreme value (GEV) distributions were suitable for the basin, but their respective performances for the drought and normal series were clearly different; and (2) the estimated quantiles at a given return period (, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 years) for the drought and normal series revealed that the high-intensity precipitation after drought was more than that under normal conditions in all three of the regions. In addition, the spatial variation of extreme precipitation in the drought and normal series was noticeable.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Foundation for the State Key Development Program for Basic Research of China (Grant No. 2010CB951102), Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51021066), General Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51279207 and 51209225), Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering (Grant No. 2011490511), the Science and Technology Foundation for Selected Overseas Chinese Scholars, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People’s Republic of China, and the International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (Grant No. 2013DFG70990).
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Published In
Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 19 • Issue 6 • June 2014
Pages: 1101 - 1112
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 1, 2012
Accepted: Sep 4, 2013
Published online: Sep 6, 2013
Discussion open until: Feb 6, 2014
Published in print: Jun 1, 2014
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