Parameter Uncertainty and Nonstationarity in Regional Rainfall Frequency in Qu River Basin, East China
Publication: Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21, Issue 5
Abstract
Traditionally, regional frequency analysis was developed for stable environmental conditions. Nevertheless, recent studies have identified significant changes in hydrological records under changing environments. Besides, uncertainty in hydrological frequency analysis is persistent. This study aims to investigate the impact of one of the most important uncertainty sources, parameter uncertainty, together with nonstationarity, on design rainfall depth in Qu River Basin, East China. A spatial bootstrap is first proposed to analyze the uncertainty of design rainfall depth estimated by at-site frequency analysis and by regional frequency analysis based on L-moments and the index variable method. Meanwhile, a method combining the generalized additive model with a 30-year moving window is employed to analyze nonstationarity existing in an extreme rainfall regime. The results show that the uncertainty of 100-year design rainfall depth due to parameter uncertainty reaches 15.42 and 12.45% with generalized extreme value (GEV) and Pearson type III (PE3) distributions, respectively, on the regional scale, while such uncertainty is up to 19.16% with GEV and 16.17% with PE3 on the at-site scale. Under the nonstationarity condition, the uncertainty of the design rainfall depth with 0.01 annual exceedance probability is 24.83% with GEV and 16.94% with PE3. The uncertainty of the design rainfall depth resulting from parameter uncertainty is less than that from nonstationarity frequency analysis with both GEV and PE3.
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Acknowledgments
This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51379183), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. LR14E090001) and the International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (2010DFA24320). The National Climate Center of China and Bureau of Hydrology, Zhejiang Province, are greatly acknowledged for providing precipitation data in Qiantang River Basin. The authors also greatly acknowledge the valuable comments of the editors and three anonymous reviewers for substantially improving the quality of this manuscript.
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Journal of Hydrologic Engineering
Volume 21 • Issue 5 • May 2016
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© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jan 3, 2015
Accepted: Dec 3, 2015
Published online: Feb 22, 2016
Published in print: May 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Jul 22, 2016
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