Assessment of Scaling Behavior of Regional Floods

Abstract

This paper examines the scaling behavior and the nature of variability of regional flood series in Quebec and Ontario, Canada. The scaling behavior and nature of variability were investigated using both the conventional statistical moments and the probability weighted moments of the flood series. The probability weighted moments were used to avoid the influences of the large observations in the determination of higher-order conventional statistical moments. Based upon the behavior of conventional statistical moments, it is found that regional annual flood series are simple scaling. However, examination of the scaling behavior of the probability weighted moments shows that the regional annual flood series are multiscaling. Further, the variability of the regional annual flood series decreases with the increase in the basin area, and there is no critical basin area where the behavior of flood series changes.