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Intensity and spatial heterogeneity of design rainstorm under nonstationarity and stationarity hypothesis across mainland China

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Abstract

Understanding the trend characteristics of design rainstorm and spatial heterogeneity of extreme precipitation is of great importance to reduce disasters induced by rare extreme precipitation. Using a high-resolution (0.5° × 0.5°) daily gridded data set of precipitation across mainland China from 1961 to 2013, this study investigated the historical changing trend and spatial heterogeneity of design rainstorm using the 30-year moving window method (30YM). Differences in the quantification of the design rainstorm were compared for the use of the 30YM and the 30-year-based increasing window method (30YBI). The results show that a significant increasing intensity but no spatially uniform trend of design rainstorm can be observed across mainland China based on the 30YM analysis. The south, east, and northeast China mainly showed an increasing trend, but the southwest and north China presented a decreasing trend. The spatial heterogeneity of the design rainstorm was greatly enhanced if the nonstationarity assumption was adopted on the national scale. The heterogeneity showed an increasing trend mainly in southeast, north, northeast, and northwest China, and a decreasing trend in southwest and west China, indicating significant regional variation in spatial heterogeneity. For most areas of mainland China, especially for southeastern, northeastern, and western China, use of the most recent precipitation sub-series to quantify the design rainstorm may weaken the potential nonstationarity and guarantee the safety of infrastructure in these areas where design rainfall increases.

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Funding

The research is financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC1508201) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51879107, 51709117, 51579105, 91547202).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering and Transportation, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510641, China

    Zhaoyang Zeng, Chengguang Lai, Zhaoli Wang & Xiangju Cheng

  2. State Key Lab of Subtropical Building Science, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510641, China

    Chengguang Lai, Zhaoli Wang & Xiangju Cheng

  3. Center of Water Resources and Environment, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Xiaohong Chen

  4. The Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2204 Griffith Drive, Champaign, IL, 61820, USA

    Zhenxing Zhang

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  1. Zhaoyang Zeng
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Correspondence to Zhaoli Wang.

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Highlight

1. Obtain a design rainstorm value using a 30-year moving window

2. Investigate the changing trend of design rainstorm across mainland China

3. Explore the spatial heterogeneity trend of design rainstorm across mainland China

4. Discuss the difference of design rainstorm from different amounts of rainfall data.

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Zeng, Z., Lai, C., Wang, Z. et al. Intensity and spatial heterogeneity of design rainstorm under nonstationarity and stationarity hypothesis across mainland China. Theor Appl Climatol 138, 1795–1808 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-019-02937-2

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