Abstract
Precipitation extremes play a key role in flooding risks over the Huaihe River Basin, which is important to understand their hydrological impacts. Based on observed daily precipitation and streamflow data from 1958 to 2009, eight precipitation indices and three streamflow indices were calculated for the study of hydrological impacts of precipitation extremes. The results indicate that the wet condition intensified in the summer wet season and the drought condition was getting worse in the autumn dry season in the later years of the past 50 years. The river basin had experienced higher heavy rainfall-related flooding risks in summer and more severe drought in autumn in the later of the period. The extreme precipitation events or consecutive heavy rain day events led to the substantial increases in streamflow extremes, which are the main causes of frequent floods in the Huaihe River Basin. The large inter-annual variation of precipitation anomalies in the upper and central Huaihe River Basin are the major contributor for the regional frequent floods and droughts.
Highlights
Meteorological extreme events have been paid more and more attention from all levels of the governments and communities because of their more frequent occurring and more devastating impacts on infrastructures and human daily life over the globe
Third assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) pointed out that the extremes referred to the rare events based on a statistical model of particular weather elements, and changes in the extreme events may relate to changes in the mean and variance (IPCC 2001)
Maximum number of consecutive days with daily precipitation 95th percentile Annual or monthly maximum 1-day precipitation amount Annual or monthly maximum precipitation amount in 5 consecutive days Total annual precipitation divided by the total number of wet days Annual or monthly minimum streamflow Annual or monthly mean streamflow Annual or monthly maximum 1-day streamflow Annual or monthly maximum streamflow in 5 consecutive days
Summary
Meteorological extreme events have been paid more and more attention from all levels of the governments and communities because of their more frequent occurring and more devastating impacts on infrastructures and human daily life over the globe. IPCC fourth assessment report summarized the characteristics of precipitation extremes at the global and regional scales and indicated that the frequency of heavy precipitation events increased over most land areas (IPCC 2007). IPCC Fifth Assessment Report indicated that the number of heavy precipitation events over land has increased in more regions since the mid-20th century and floods larger than recorded since. Precipitation changes showed a widespread and significant increase, but the changes were much less spatially coherent compared with temperature changes (Alexander et al 2006). Many studies showed that there were less spatial or temporal coherence in precipitation changes. Based on various precipitation indices, these studies focused on various specific regions, such as Southeast Asia and the South Pacific (Manton et al 2001), Eastern Mediterranean (Kostopoulou and Jones 2005), Western Indian Ocean (Vincent et al 2011), southern Poland and central-eastern Germany (Lupikasza et al 2011), northwest
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