Abstract
Scaling behaviors in the precipitation time series derived from 1951 to 2009 over China are investigated by detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) method. The results show that there exists long-term memory for the precipitation time series in some stations, where the values of the scaling exponent α are less than 0.62, implying weak persistence characteristics. The values of scaling exponent in other stations indicate random behaviors. In addition, the scaling exponent α in precipitation records varies from station to station over China. A numerical test is made to verify the significance in DFA exponents by shuffling the data records many times. We think it is significant when the values of scaling exponent before shuffled precipitation records are larger than the interval threshold for 95 % confidence level after shuffling precipitation records many times. By comparison, the daily precipitation records exhibit weak positively long-range correlation in a power law fashion mainly at the stations taking on zonal distributions in south China, upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River, northern part of northeast China. This may be related to the subtropical high. Furthermore, the values of scaling exponent which cannot pass the significance test do not show a clear distribution pattern. It seems that the stations are mainly distributed in coastal areas, southwest China, and southern part of north China. In fact, many complicated factors may affect the scaling behaviors of precipitation such as the system of the east and south Asian monsoon, the interaction between sea and land, and the big landform of the Tibetan Plateau. These results may provide a better prerequisite to long-term predictor of precipitation time series for different regions over China.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bunde A, Havlin S, Kantelhardt JW, Penzel T, Peter JH, Voigt K (2000) Correlated and uncorrelated regions in heart-rate fluctuations during sleep. Phys Rev Lett 85:3736
Bunde A, Havlin S (2002) Power-law persistence in the atmosphere and in the oceans. Phys A 314:15
Blender R, Fraedrich K (2003) Long time memory in global warming simulations. Geophys Res Lett 30(14):1769
Chen X, Lin G, Fu Z (2007) Long-range correlations in daily relative humidity fluctuations: a new index to characterize the climate regions over China. Geophys Res Lett 34:L07804
Chen Z, Ivanov PC, Hu K, Stanley HE (2002) Effect of nonstationarities on detrended fluctuation analysis. Phys Rev E 65:041107
Eichner JF, Koscielny-Bunde E, Bunde A, Havlin S, Schellnhuber HJ (2003) Power-law persistence and trends in the atmosphere—a detailed study of long temperature records. Phys Rev E 68:046133
Govindan RB, Vyushin D, Bunde A, Brenner S, Havlin S, Schellnhuber HJ (2002) Global climate models violate scaling of the observed atmospheric variability. Phys Rev Lett 89:028501
Hurst H (1951) Long-term storage capacity of reservoirs. Translation of the American Society of Civil Engineer 116:770
Hu K, Ivanov PC, Chen Z, Carpena P, Stanley HE (2001) Effect of trends on detrended fluctuation analysis. Phys Rev E 64:011114
Ivanova K, Ausloos M, Clothiaux EE, Ackerman TP (2000) Break-up of stratus cloud structure predicted from non Brownian motion liquid water and brightness temperature fluctuations. Europhys Lett 52:40
Jiang L, Yuan N, Fu Z, Wang D, Zhao X, Zhu X (2012) Subarea characteristics of the long range correlations and the index χ for daily temperature records over China. Theor Appl Climatol 109:261
Jiang L, Li N, Fu Z, Zhang J (2015) Long-range correlation behaviors for the 0-cm average ground surface temperature and average air temperature over China. Theor Appl Climatol 119:25
Kantelhardt JW, Koscielny-Bunde E, Rego HA, Havlin S, Bunde A (2001) Detecting long-range correlations with detrended fluctuation analysis. Phys A 295:441
Kantelhardt JW, Koscielny-Bunde E, Rybski D, Braun P, Bunde A, Havlin S (2006) Long-term persistence and multifractality of precipitation and river runoff records. J Geophys Res 111:D01106. doi:10.1029/2005JD005881
Király A, Jánosi IM (2005) Detrended fluctuation analysis of daily temperature records: geographic dependence over Australia. Meteorog Atmos Phys 88:119
Koscielny-Bunde E, Bunde A, Havlin S, Goldreich Y (1996) Analysis of daily temperature fluctuations. Phys A 231:393
Koscielny-Bunde E, Bunde A, Havlin S, Roman HE, Goldreich Y, Schellnhuber HJ (1998) Indication of a universal persistence law governing atmospheric variability. Phys Rev Lett 81:729
Li M, Lim SC (2008) Modeling network traffic using generalized Cauchy process. Physica A 387:2584
Lin G, Chen X, Fu Z (2007) Temporal-spatial diversities of LRC for relative humidity over China. Phys A 383:585
Liu YH, Cizeau P, Meyer M, Peng C-K, Stanley HE (1997) Quantification of correlations in economic time series. Phys A 245:437
Lovejoy S, Mandelbrot B (1985) Fractal properties of rain and a fractal model. Tellus Ser A 37:209
Mandelbrot BB, Wallis JR (1969) Some long-run properties of geophysical records. Water Resour Res 5(2):321
Matsoukas C, Islam S, Rodriguez-Iturbe I (2000) Detrended fluctuation analysis of rainfall and streamflow time series. J Geophys Res 105(D23):29165
Monetti RA, Havlin S, Bunde A (2003) Long term persistence in the sea-surface temperature fluctuations. Phys A 320:581
Peng C-K, Buldyrev SV, Havlin S, Simons M, Stanley HE, Goldberger AL (1994) Mosaic organization of DNA nucleotides. Phys Rev E 49:1685
Rybski D, Bunde A, von Storch H (2008) Long-term memory in 1000 years simulated temperature records. J Geophys Res 113(D2):D02106
Talkner P, Weber RO (2000) Power spectrum and detrended fluctuation analysis: application to daily temperatures. Phys Rev E 62:150
Valencia JL, Requejo AS, Gasco JM, Tarquis AM (2010) A universal multifractal description applied to precipitation patterns of the Ebro river basin, Spain. Clim Res 44:17
Varotsos CA, Efstathiou MN, Cracknell AP (2013) On the scaling effect in global surface air temperature anomalies. Atmos Chem Phys 13:5243
Walther GR, Post E, Convey P, Menzel A, Parmesank C, Beebee TJC, Fromentin J-M, Hoegh-Guldberg O, Bairlein F (2002) Ecological responses to recent climate change. Nature 416:389
Weber RO, Talkner P (2001) Spectra and correlations of climate data from days to decades. J Geophys Res 106:20131
Yuan N, Fu Z, Mao J (2010) Different scaling behaviors in daily temperature records over China. Phys A 389:4087
Zhai PM, Zhang XB, Wan H, Pan XH (2004) Trends in total precipitation and frequency of daily precipitation extremes over China. J Clim 18:1096
Zhang Q, Xu C-Y, Zhang Z, Chen YD, Liu C-L (2008) Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation maxima during 1960–2005 in the Yangtze river basin and possible association with large-scale circulation. J Hydrol 353:215
Zou XK, Zhai PM, Zhang Q (2005) Variations in droughts over China, 1951–2003. Geophys Res Lett 32:L04707. doi:10.1029/2004GL021853
Acknowledgments
Many thanks are due to supports from the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST (2014r18), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDA01020304), and the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD). The authors also express their great appreciation to the editor and the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
ESM 1
(XLSX 192 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jiang, L., Li, N. & Zhao, X. Scaling behaviors of precipitation over China. Theor Appl Climatol 128, 63–70 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1689-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-015-1689-2