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Impacts of different threshold definition methods on analyzing temporal-spatial features of extreme precipitation in the Pearl River Basin

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Abstract

Extreme precipitation event is rare and mostly occurs on a relatively small local scale, which presents marked uncertainties when analyzing its characteristics. Using daily precipitation data covering 1959–2009 from 62 stations over the Pearl River Basin, the percentile method (PM) and the absolute critical value method (ACVM) are applied to define extreme precipitation thresholds (EPT), and their different impacts on the spatial–temporal distribution of extreme precipitation event were analyzed in this study. The findings of this study show: (1) Using the K-means clustering algorithm in terms of precipitation indices and the topography, longitude and latitude of each station, the whole basin is divided into eight precipitation zones. (2) The extreme indices, including extreme precipitation frequency, extreme precipitation proportion and proportion of extremely n-day precipitation, calculated by PM are markedly higher than those calculated by ACVM during five decades, which is particularly obvious in the low precipitation area such as the west-northern of the basin since more daily precipitation events are treated as extreme precipitation in this region if EPT is defined by PM. (3) The spatial distributions of extreme frequencies respectively calculated by these two methods are quite different across the basin. The spatial distribution of extreme frequencies calculated by ACVM shows a high-value center in the southeast coastal areas and a low-value center in the northwest mountain areas. However, the extreme frequencies calculated by PM distribute evenly over the basin, which is obviously inconsistent with the empirical results, an area with heavy precipitation usually has a high extreme precipitation frequency, and vice versa.

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Acknowledgments

The research in this paper is fully supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 91547108, and 41301627), and the Water Conservancy Science and Technology Project of Guangdong Province, China (Grant No. 2014-20). We would like to thank the National Climatic Centre (NCC) of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) for providing the valuable meteorological data and Enago (www.enago.cn) for the English language review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Water Resources and Environment, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China

    Bingjun Liu, Xiuhong Chen & Junfan Chen

  2. Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Water Security in Southern China of Guangdong High Education Institute, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaohong Chen

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  1. Bingjun Liu
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  2. Xiuhong Chen
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Correspondence to Bingjun Liu.

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Liu, B., Chen, X., Chen, J. et al. Impacts of different threshold definition methods on analyzing temporal-spatial features of extreme precipitation in the Pearl River Basin. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 31, 1241–1252 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-016-1284-9

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