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Development and Testing of Single‐Parameter Precipitation Distributions
Author(s) -
Selker John S.,
Haith Douglas A.
Publication year - 1990
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/wr026i011p02733
Subject(s) - weibull distribution , precipitation , shape parameter , location parameter , probability distribution , environmental science , yield (engineering) , statistics , distribution (mathematics) , mathematics , meteorology , climatology , geology , geography , thermodynamics , physics , mathematical analysis
A general procedure was developed for calibrating multiparameter probability distributions of daily precipitation to single‐parameter distributions. The approach uses monthly precipitation summaries and data from U.S. Weather Bureau Technical Paper 57 (Miller and Frederick, 1966). The three‐parameter beta‐ P model of daily precipitation amount was calibrated for 33 sites east of the Rocky Mountains. The resulting single‐parameter Weibull distribution and two other single‐parameter precipitation distributions were compared with respect to their fit to Paper 57 summaries and historical daily precipitation records. The Weibull model was shown to yield significant improvement over the other models in reproducing precipitation probability distributions.