A Cautionary Note on the Use of Nonparametric Bootstrap for Estimating Uncertainties in Extreme-Value Models

The parametric and nonparametric approaches to the bootstrap are compared as to their performance in estimating uncertainties in extreme-value models. Simulation experiments make use of several combinations of true and fitted probability distributions utilized in climatological and hydrological applications. The results demonstrate that for small to moderate sample sizes the nonparametric bootstrap should be interpreted with caution because it leads to confidence intervals that are too narrow and underestimate the real uncertainties involved in the frequency models. Although the parametric bootstrap yields confidence intervals that are slightly too liberal as well, it improves the uncertainty estimates in most examined cases, even under conditions in which an incorrect parametric model is adopted for the data. Differences among three examined types of bootstrap confidence intervals (percentile, bootstrap t, and bias corrected and accelerated) are usually smaller in comparison with those between t...