Spatiotemporal variations of the precipitation in the Yellow River Basin considering climate and instrumental disturbance

Climate change and instrumental disturbance make accurate identification of hydrometeorological period challenging. This study presents the hierarchical discrete-continuous wavelet decomposition (HDCWD) model to identify period with considering climate and instrumental disturbance. The method provides a three-layer identification framework of detrending, denoising and mining by combining discrete wavelet transform and continuous wavelet transform. The dominating periods and their spatiotemporal features of precipitation in the Yellow River Basin are identified by HDCWD. Results show the following: (1) Precipitation in the Yellow River Basin has the dominating periods of 2–4 years and 7–9 years (1956–1984), and period of 2 years from (1998–2002). (2) The periods of catchments in higher latitude exhibit longer and those in the lower east exhibit shorter. The results illustrate that although the precipitation in the Yellow River Basin differs in space and time, there is a certain evolution law. The results can provide information for water resources management. •A new method, hierarchical discrete–continuous wavelet decomposition, is proposed to improve dominating period identification.•Noise exists in the precipitation series in the Yellow River Basin and changes the mean and median occurring randomly in time and space.•Denoising process reveals the inherent statistical characteristics and contributes to reveal corresponding clearer periodic law.•Precipitation in the YRB has the dominating periods of 2–4 years and 7–9 years with the evident zonality as longitude and latitude vary.