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A stochastic model of dimensionless hyetograph
Author(s) -
GarciaGuzman A.,
ArandaOliver E.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/93wr00517
Subject(s) - dimensionless quantity , precipitation , fraction (chemistry) , interval (graph theory) , mathematics , environmental science , log normal distribution , event (particle physics) , stochastic modelling , climatology , statistics , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , geology , physics , thermodynamics , combinatorics , chemistry , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics
A very simple statistical model is proposed to describe the time distribution of rainfall within a rainy event. The modeled process is the dimensionless hyetograph H ( t j ) that represents the fraction of rainfall accumulated over the time interval (0, t j ), where t j is a fraction of the total duration. In any rainy episode lasting n +1 units of time, the sequence H ( t 1 ), …, H ( t n ) is described as an ordered sample from the beta distribution. Dimensionless rainfall from hourly data at three stations in Southern Spain show little dependence on rainfall duration, amount of precipitation, or period of the year. These results, though not essential to the model structure, simplify its formulation, reducing the number of parameters. Other features of the historical records, such as correlations, maximum dimensionless hourly precipitation, or frequency curves, are reasonably well reproduced by the model.