FRACTAL ANALYSIS OF MONTHLY EVAPORATION AND PRECIPITATION TIME SERIES AT CENTRAL MEXICO

Abstract

Advances on climate change research, as well as the assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on water resources, would allow the understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of land-surface precipitation and evaporation time series at local and regional levels. In the present study, the spectral analysis approach was applied on monthly evaporation and precipitation anomaly time series with the aim of estimating their self-affinity statistics. The behavior of estimated fractal dimension values of evaporation time series throughout Zacatecas State territory is irregular, and noise in all the evaporation anomaly time series tends to have a persistent behavior. On the other hand, the behavior of estimated fractal dimension values of most of the precipitation time series throughout Zacatecas State territory tends to be like the Brownian motion. Self-affinity statistics of monthly evaporation or precipitation anomaly time series and geographic coordinates of 32 stations were used to estimate correlation coefficients; the results are compelling evidence concerning monthly precipitation anomaly behavior tends to be more regular toward North of Zacatecas State territory, that is, toward driest areas.

Keywords

• self-affinity
• fractal dimension
• spectral analysis