Abstract
Climate change is receiving more attention from researchers as the frequency of occurrence of severe natural disasters is getting higher. Tropical countries like Malaysia have no distinct four seasons; rainfall has become the popular parameter to assess climate change. Conventional ways that determine rainfall trends can only provide a general result in single direction for the whole study period. In this study, rainfall series were modelled using additive Holt–Winters method to examine the rainfall pattern in Langat River Basin, Malaysia. Nine homogeneous series of more than 25 years data and less than 10% missing data were selected. Goodness of fit of the forecasted models was measured. It was found that seasonal rainfall model forecasts are generally better than the monthly rainfall model forecasts. Three stations in the western region exhibited increasing trend. Rainfall in southern region showed fluctuation. Increasing trends were discovered at stations in the south-eastern region except the seasonal analysis at station 45253. Decreasing trend was found at station 2818110 in the east, while increasing trend was shown at station 44320 that represents the north-eastern region. The accuracies of both rainfall model forecasts were tested using the recorded data of years 2010–2012. Most of the forecasts are acceptable.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Afzal M, Mansell M G and Gagnon A S 2011 Trends and variability in daily precipitation in Scotland; Procedia Environ. Sci. 6 15–26.
Caloiero T, Coscarelli R, Ferrari E and Mancini M 2011 Trend detection of annual and seasonal rainfall in Calabria (southern Italy); Int. J. Climatol. 31 44–56.
Chang H and Kwon W 2007 Spatial variations of summer precipitation trends in South Korea, 1973–2005; Environ. Res. Lett. 2 045012.
Criss R E and Winston W E 2008 Do Nash values have value? Discussion and alternate proposals; Hydrol. Process. 22 2723–2725.
Ghahraman B and Taghvaeian S 2008 Investigation of annual rainfall trends in Iran; J. Agr. Sci. Technol. 10 93–97.
Guhathakurta P and Rajeevan M 2008 Trends in the rainfall pattern over India; Int. J. Climatol. 28 1453– 1469.
Gundalia M J and Dholakia M B 2012 Prediction of maximum/minimum temperatures using Holt Winters method with Excel spreadsheet for Junagadh region; Int. J. Eng. Res. Technol. 1.
Holt C C 2004 Forecasting seasonals and trends by exponentially weighted moving averages; Int. J. Forecasting 20 5–10.
Jayawardene H K W I, Sonnadara D U J and Jayewardene D R 2005 Trends in rainfall in Sri Lanka over the last century; Sri Lankan J. Phys. 6 7–17.
Kamruzzaman M, Beecham S and Metcalfe A V 2011 Non-stationarity in rainfall and temperature in the Murray Darling Basin; Hydrol. Process. 25 1659–1675.
Karpozos D K, Kavalieratou S and Babajimopoulos C 2010 Trend analysis of precipitation data in Pieria region (Greece); European Water 30 31–40.
Krause P, Boyle D P and Bäse F 2005 Comparison of different efficiency criteria for hydrological model assessment; Adv. Geosci. 5 89–97.
Lewis C D 1982 Industrial and business forecasting methods: A practical guide to exponential smoothing and curve fitting; Butterworth Scientific, 143p.
Luís M D, Raventós J, González-Hidalgo J C, Sánchez J R and Cortina J 2000 Spatial analysis of rainfall trends in the region of Valencia (east Spain); Int. J. Climatol. 20 1451–1469.
Miller W P and Piechota T C 2008 Regional analysis of trend and step changes observed in hydroclimatic variables around the Colorado River basin; J. Hydrometeorol. 9 1020–1034.
Mondal A, Kundu S and Mukhopadhyay A 2012 Rainfall trend analysis by Mann–Kendall test: A case study of northeastern part of Cuttack district, Orissa; Int. J. Geol. Earth Environ. Sci. 2 70–78.
Obot N I, Chendo M A C, Udo S O and Ewona I O 2010 Evaluation of rainfall trends in Nigeria for 30 years (1978–2007); Int. J. Phys. Sci. 5 2217–2222.
Schaefli B and Gupta H V 2007 Do Nash values have value? Hydrol. Process. 21 2075–2080.
Seleshi Y and Zanke U 2004 Recent changes in rainfall and rainy days in Ethiopia; Int. J. Climatol. 24 973–983.
Sopipan N 2014 Forecasting rainfall in Thailand: A case study of Nakhon Ratchasima Province; Int. J. Environ. Ecol. Geol. Geophys. Eng. 8 717–721.
Tabari H, Abghari H and Talaee P H 2012 Temporal trends and spatial characteristics of drought and rainfall in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran; Hydrol. Process. 26 3351–3361.
Wang S, Zhang X, Liu Z and Wang D 2013 Trend analysis of precipitation in the Jinsha River Basin in China; J. Hydrometeorol. 14 290–303.
Wijingaard J B, Klein Tank A M G and Können G P 2003 Homogeneity of 20th century European daily temperature and precipitation series; Int. J. Climatol. 23 679–692.
Winters P R 1960 Forecasting sales by exponentially weighted moving averages; Manag. Sci. 6 324–342.
Wong C L, Venneker R, Uhlenbrook S, Jamil A B M and Zhou Y 2009 Variability of rainfall in Peninsular Malaysia; Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss. 6 6571–5503.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Puah, Y.J., Huang, Y.F., Chua, K.C. et al. River catchment rainfall series analysis using additive Holt–Winters method. J Earth Syst Sci 125, 269–283 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-016-0661-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-016-0661-6