Determination of duration, threshold and spatiotemporal distribution of extreme continuous precipitation in nine major river basins in China

Abstract

China is one of the countries most severely affected by extreme precipitation, and it is urgent to carry out relevant research on the spatiotemporal distribution of extreme precipitation in China. Compared with single-day precipitation events, heavy precipitation events often last for multiple days and have greater potential disaster impacts, such as floods and mudslides. Therefore, in this study, we focus on continuous precipitation (CP) events for analysis. In order to determine the most probable duration of continuous heavy precipitation events, we innovatively adopted two time-frequency variation methods, namely Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT). Then through Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) and multifractal DFA (MF-DFA) methods, extreme CP thresholds are extracted according to the fluctuation characteristics of the CP series. The results show that the average duration of heavy precipitation in the Pearl River Basin (PRB) area was the longest (up to 7.7 days), followed by the Continental Basin (CB) area (7.6 days). The Haihe River Basin (HRB) area had the shortest duration of heavy precipitation (5.0 days), followed by the Huaihe River Basin (HURB) area (5.9 days). The extreme CP threshold in the Southeast Basin (SEB) area was the largest (112.17 mm), followed by the PRB area (108.22 mm). The extreme CP threshold in the CB area was the smallest (20.17 mm), followed by the Yellow River Basin (YRB) area (44.31 mm). Through mutation and trend testing to evaluate the changing state of the extreme CP time series, it was found that, with one exception (HRB), the average extreme CP after the mutation in the watershed areas was larger than that before the mutation, and eight watersheds showed an upward trend in extreme CP. This suggests that most watershed areas in China are at risk of extreme CP increases. This study can provide an important reference for the analysis of extreme CP in China.