Abstract
Hydrological predictions in ungauged basins are of significant importance for water resources management. In hydrological frequency analysis, regional methods are regarded as useful tools in estimating design rainfall/flood for areas with only little data available. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of two regional methods, namely the Hosking’s approach and the cokriging approach, in hydrological frequency analysis. These two methods are employed to estimate 24-h design rainfall depths in Hanjiang River Basin, one of the largest tributaries of Yangtze River, China. Validation is made through comparing the results to those calculated from the provincial handbook approach which uses hundreds of rainfall gauge stations. Also for validation purpose, five hypothetically ungauged sites from the middle basin are chosen. The final results show that compared to the provincial handbook approach, the Hosking’s approach often overestimated the 24-h design rainfall depths while the cokriging approach most of the time underestimated. Overall, the Hosking’ approach produced more accurate results than the cokriging approach.
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Acknowledgements
This research is financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 50809058), International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of China (2010DFA24320) and Doctorial Foundation of Ministry of Education (Project NO. 200803351029). The authors also would like to thank China Meteorological Administration and Bureau of Hydrology, Yangtze Commission for providing precipitation data of the Hanjiang River Basin. Finally, the authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their useful and constructive comments.
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Xu, YP., Yu, C., Zhang, X. et al. Design rainfall depth estimation through two regional frequency analysis methods in Hanjiang River Basin, China. Theor Appl Climatol 107, 563–578 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0497-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-011-0497-6