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Precipitation variability assessment of northeast China: Songhua River basin

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Abstract

Variability in precipitation is critical for the management of water resources. In this study, the research entropy base concept was applied to investigate spatial and temporal variability of the precipitation during 1964–2013 in the Songhua River basin of Heilongjiang Province in China. Sample entropy was applied on precipitation data on a monthly, seasonally, annually, decade scale and the number of rainy days for each selected station. Intensity entropy and apportionment entropy were used to calculate the variability over individual year and decade, respectively. Subsequently, Spearman’s Rho and Mann–Kendall tests were applied to observe for trends in the precipitation time series. The statistics of sample disorder index showed that the precipitation during February (mean 1.09, max. 1.26 and min. 0.80), April (mean 1.12, max. 1.29 and min. 0.99) and July (mean 1.10, max. 1.20 and min. 0.98) contributed significantly higher than those of other months. Overall, the contribution of the winter season was considerably high with a standard deviation of 0.10. The precipitation variability on decade basis was observed to increase from decade 1964–1973 and 1994–2003 with a mean value of decadal apportionment disorder index 0.023 and 0.053, respectively. In addition, the Mann–Kendall test value (1.90) showed a significant positive trend only at the Shangzhi station.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41071053, No. 51479032), Sub-Task of National Science and Technology Support Program for Rural Development in the 12th Five-Year Plan of China (No. 2013BAD20B04-S3), Specialized Research Fund for the Public Welfare Industry of the Ministry of Water Resources (No. 201301096), Specialized Research Fund for Innovative Talents of Harbin (Excellent Academic Leader) (No. 2013RFXXJ001), Science and Technology Research Program of Education Department of Heilongjiang Province (No. 12531012), Science and Technology Program of Water Conservancy of Heilongjiang Province (No. 201319) and the Northeast Agricultural University Innovation Foundation For Postgraduate (No.yjscx14069).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Water Conservancy & Civil Engineering, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin Heilongjiang 150030, China; Key Laboratory of Water-Saving Agriculture of Universities in Heilongjiang Province, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin Heilongjiang 150030, China and Key Laboratory of High Efficient Utilization of Agricultural Water Resource of Ministry of Agriculture, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin Heilongjiang, 150030, China

    Muhammad Imran Khan, Dong Liu, Qiang Fu, Mingjie Luo, Yuxiang Hu, Yongjia Zhang & Faiz M Abrar

  2. Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI), Politecnico Di Torino, 10129, Torino, Italy

    Muhammad Azmat

  3. Institute of Geographical Information Systems (IGIS), School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (SCEE), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), H-12, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Azmat

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  1. Muhammad Imran Khan
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  2. Dong Liu
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  3. Qiang Fu
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  4. Muhammad Azmat
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  5. Mingjie Luo
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  6. Yuxiang Hu
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  7. Yongjia Zhang
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  8. Faiz M Abrar
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Correspondence to Dong Liu.

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Corresponding editor: A K Sahai

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Khan, M.I., Liu, D., Fu, Q. et al. Precipitation variability assessment of northeast China: Songhua River basin. J Earth Syst Sci 125, 957–968 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-016-0715-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-016-0715-9

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