SPATIAL VARIATION OF PRECIPITATION IN THE HUANG-HUAI-HAI RIVER BASIN UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE

The Huang-Huai-Hai River Basin covers the major political and socioeconomic centers of China. Thus, flood protection and economic development by sustainable water supply are important. Due to this, it is imperative to study distribution and variation of precipitation characteristics under climate change. As hydrological observations are limited, scholars have done more research on daily, monthly, and annual data but less research on hourly data. Meanwhile, short-term extreme precipitation is the main cause of urban flooding and related rural disasters and analysis of these patterns can reflect trend changes of extreme hydrological events. This paper uses daily and hourly data from six rainfall stations in the Huang-Huai-Hai Basin representing the precipitation characteristics over the basin. A variety of statistical methods is used to analyze the observations. Intensity-duration curves are used for extreme value characteristics. The results show that the annual precipitation amount is increasing in the northern area of the Huang-Huai-Hai Basin. Similarly, the southern areas display a decreasing trend. The annual effective rainfall intensity shows an overall increasing trend. Analyzing the extreme values of precipitation in the basin shows that short-term rainfall intensity displays both increasing and decreasing trends depending on the latitude. Thus, there is no general trend but instead changes in rainfall climate that is spatially dependent. This may be connected to spatial changes in the occurring East-Asian monsoon that is influencing the general rainfall climate in the area