MEASURES OF THE VARIABILITY OF PRECIPITATION

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A study is made of the usefulness of four different measures of the relative variability of precipitation. It is discovered that the two measures, the difference between the extremes divided by the median, are subject to too great fluctuations in sampling to be satisfactory. There is little to choose between the two measures, the mean deviation or the standard deviation divided by the mean. Even with these measures, the fluctuations are sufficiently large so that a period of 30 years is desirable before computing them. It is further shown that the standard deviation divided by the mean varies slightly with mean precipitation but, in spite of this, it is a satisfactory measure with which to compare variability of precipitation in different localities.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: