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Monsoon Variability and the Mekong Flood Regime

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Book cover The Mekong Delta System

Part of the book series: Springer Environmental Science and Engineering ((SPRINGERENVIRON))

Abstract

The Mekong River in Southeast Asia owes its tidal annual flood regime to the monsoon. But the monsoon is a spatially and temporally variable circulation, with different annual to millennial variability for different regions. We focus on the separation between the Indian and the Western North-Pacific monsoon component to shed light on the interannual flood variability of the Mekong River.

The variance of flood discharge at four stations on the Mekong River is analyzed, as well as two well-known monsoon indices that represent annual monsoon intensity for the Indian Ocean monsoon circulation and for the Western North-Pacific monsoon circulation. An effort is made to identify the coarser temporal resolution that contains most of the interannual variability.

A close connection between the Western North-Pacific monsoon and the flood discharge in Kratie is found. This correlation is stronger for periods with enhanced variance. We find that the Western North-Pacific monsoon variance is a good predictor of flood variance. This dependence influences the probability of occurrence of a flood in the Mekong Delta.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Mann-Kendall test is a non-parametric (does not assume that the data follow a certain distribution) statistical test. It is used to reject or accept the hypothesis that the time series of interest is trend free, by evaluating a rank-based statistic.

  2. 2.

    The Morlet wavelet is one of a set of orthogonal functions that, just like a sine or a cosine function, allow the transformation of a periodic function between its time domain and frequency domain. The advantage of using a complex wavelet and not a sine and cosine is that it is well defined both in the frequency and time domain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section 5.4 Hydrology, German Research Centre for Geoscience (GFZ), Telegrafenberg, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Jose Miguel Delgado, Bruno Merz & Heiko Apel

Authors
  1. Jose Miguel Delgado
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  2. Bruno Merz
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  3. Heiko Apel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jose Miguel Delgado .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Institute for Environment and Human, United Nations University, Hermann-Ehlers-Str. 10, Bonn, 53113, Germany

    Fabrice G. Renaud

  2. , Earth Observation Center, EOC, German Aerospace Center, DLR, ---, Oberpfaffenhofen, Wessling, 82234, Germany

    Claudia Kuenzer

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Delgado, J.M., Merz, B., Apel, H. (2012). Monsoon Variability and the Mekong Flood Regime. In: Renaud, F., Kuenzer, C. (eds) The Mekong Delta System. Springer Environmental Science and Engineering. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3962-8_9

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