Improved continuous wavelet analysis of variation in the dominant period of hydrological time series

Abstract

Two key issues of continuous wavelet transform (CWT), the choice of wavelet basis function and the determination of analytic procedure of CWT, were studied and approaches to solve them proposed. Then, the improved CWT method was used to reveal the periodic characteristics of several typical hydrological series, including runoff and precipitation data measured at diverse sampling rates. Finally, the results of periods identified by three methods were compared, and the variation of the first main period (FMP) with length of the annual hydrological series was investigated. The results indicate that hydrological time series show both global and local characteristics. Comparatively, the latter are more complicated and difficult to describe, because of their frequent manifestations of irregular phenomena. Moreover, the variation of FMP just reflects the complicated local characteristics of the hydrological series. In summary, this study improves the understanding of complicated hydrological processes, whereas description and simulation of the local characteristics of hydrological series should be the focus of future research. © 2013 Copyright 2013 IAHS Press.