Homogeneity testing: How homogeneous do heterogeneous cross-correlated regions seem?

SummaryThe homogeneity of the flood frequency regime for a given pooling-group of sites is a fundamental assumption for many regional flood frequency analysis techniques. Assessing regional homogeneity is a critical step, which may be complicated by the presence of cross-correlation among flood sequences. The scientific literature proposes a number of statistical homogeneity tests and documents that inter-site correlation of floods is normally not negligible, but does not specifically address the impact of cross-correlation on such statistical tests. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of a well-known homogeneity test proposed in the scientific literature in the presence of inter-site cross-correlation through a series of Monte Carlo experiments. The numerical experiments enable us to comment on a possible theoretical correction for the test and to identify an empirical tool that accounts for the impact of inter-site cross-correlation of floods.