Universality in the precipitation and river runoff

¹ Institut für Theoretische Physik III, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen - Heinrich-Buff-Ring 16, 35392, Giessen, Germany
² Radio System Department, St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University - Professor Popov str. 5, 197376, St. Petersburg, Russia

^a Armin.Bunde@physik.uni-giessen.de

Received: 2 November 2011
Accepted: 13 January 2012

Abstract

For characterizing the inherent dynamical structure of precipitation and river runoffs, we study in representative seasonally detrended records the durations τ where the record is below a given threshold Q. When keeping the return period R_Q of the threshold fixed, we find that the probability density function (PDF) of these durations shows universal features when scaled with the average duration ⟨τ⟩. For both types of data the scaling function can be approximated by a Γ-distribution, but also a description by the corresponding PDF of long-term correlated records is possible. The parameters of the PDF depend on the kind of data (precipitation or river runoff) and on R_Q but neither on the climate nor on the hydrological details of the location of the record.