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Profile photo of Ronny Berndtsson

Ronny Berndtsson

Professor, Dep Director, MECW Dep Scientific Coordinator

Profile photo of Ronny Berndtsson

Preuve de l’0existence de chaos dans le processus pluie-débit

Evidence of chaos in the rainfall-runoff process

Author

  • B. Sivakumar
  • Ronny Berndtsson
  • Jonas Olsson
  • Kenji Jinno

Summary, in English

The transformation of rainfall into runoff is one of the most important processes in hydrology. In the past few decades, a wide variety of automated or computer-based approaches have been applied to model this process. However, many such approaches have an important limitation in that they treat the rainfall-runoff process as a realization of only a few parameters of linear relationships rather than the process as a whole. What is required, therefore, is an approach that can capture not only the overall appearance but also the intricate details of the nonlinear behaviour of the process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of understanding the dynamics of the rainfall-runoff process from a new perspective, as a chaotic process. The possible existence of chaotic behaviour in the rainfall-runoff process is studied by investigating the rainfall and runoff time series: (a) separately; and (b) jointly (using the runoff coefficient). Monthly rainfall and runoff observed over a period of 131 years (January 1807-December 1937) at the Göta River basin in the south of Sweden are analysed. The correlation dimension method is employed to identify the presence of chaos. The correlation dimensions obtained for the rainfall and runoff time series are 6.4 and 5.5, respectively. The finite dimensions obtained for the rainfall and runoff time series indicate the possible existence of chaos in these processes, implying that the joint rainfall-runoff process might also exhibit chaotic behaviour. The correlation dimension of about 7.8 obtained for the runoff coefficient also indicates the possible presence of chaos and supports the above results.

Department/s

  • Division of Water Resources Engineering

Publishing year

2001

Language

French

Pages

131-145

Publication/Series

Hydrological Sciences Journal

Volume

46

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Topic

  • Oceanography, Hydrology, Water Resources

Keywords

  • Chaotic dynamics
  • Correlation dimension
  • Göta River
  • Nonlinear analysis
  • Rainfall-runoff models
  • Runoff coefficient
  • Sweden
  • Time series analysis

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0262-6667