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A complex network approach to study the extreme precipitation patterns in a river basin
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  • Mayuri Gadhawe,
  • Ravi Guntu,
  • Abhirup Banerjee,
  • Norbert Marwan,
  • Ankit Agarwal
Mayuri Gadhawe
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

Corresponding Author:mayurigadhawe05@gmail.com

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Ravi Guntu
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
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Abhirup Banerjee
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
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Norbert Marwan
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
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Ankit Agarwal
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
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Abstract

The spatiotemporal patterns of precipitation are critical for understanding the underlying mechanism of many hydrological and climate phenomena. Over the last decade, applications of the complex network theory as a data-driven technique has contributed significantly to study the intricate relationship between many variable in a compact way. In our work, we conduct a study to compare an extreme precipitation pattern in Ganga River Basin, by constructing the networks using two nonlinear methods - event synchronization (ES) and edit distance (ED). Event synchronization has been frequently used to measure the synchronicity between the climate extremes like extreme precipitation by calculating the number of synchronized events between two events like time series. Edit distance measures the similarity/dissimilarity between the events by reducing the number of operations required to convert one segment to another, that consider the events’ occurrence and amplitude. Here, we compare the extreme precipitation patterns obtained from both network construction methods based on different network’s characteristics. We used degree to understand network topology and identify important nodes in the networks. We also attempted to quantify the impact of precipitation seasonality and topography on extreme events. The study outcomes suggested that the degree is decreased in the southwest to the northwest direction and the timing of peak precipitation influences it. We also found an inverse relationship between elevation and timing of peak precipitation exists and the lower elevation greatly influences the connectivity of the stations. The study highlights that Edit distance better captures the network’s topology without getting affected by artificial boundaries.