Daily anomalous high flow (DAHF) of a headwater catchment over the East River basin in South China

•This paper proposes a new approach for studying streamflow disturbances.•DAHF is defined for analyzing the features of level-based streamflow disturbances.•The first level DAHF and related precipitation have similar variability evolution.•The VIC model has better performance on the first level DAHF for the study area.

SummaryThis study develops a new method for analyzing the terrestrial hydrologic responses to precipitation through using level-based daily anomalous high flow (DAHF) occurrence in a catchment. The objectives of this study are twofold: (1) to explore the DAHF features over a headwater catchment; and (2) to evaluate the performance of a hydrologic model for DAHF simulation. In this study, DAHF is defined as the daily streamflow on a given day, whose deseasonalised daily streamflow is larger than a given multiplier of the standard deviation (STD) of the long-term deseasonalised streamflow series. Streamflow observations of a headwater catchment over the period of 1952-1972 (i.e., before reservoir operation) at the Longchuan station in the East River basin in South China are studied. The macro-scale Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model is used for streamflow simulation in the catchment, and wavelet analysis is performed to explore the DAHF variability. The study reveals that the percentages of the number of days with the first and second levels of DAHFs are 4.2% and 1%, respectively, for the observed streamflows, while the corresponding percentages for the VIC model-simulated streamflow are 5% and 1.3%, respectively. Application of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit test indicates that these two levels of DAHFs can be described by two probability distribution functions, namely the Lognormal distribution and Generalized Extreme Value Type II distribution, respectively. The variability spectrum of the first level DAHF is basically consistent with that of antecedent precipitation, but not for the second level DAHF, as revealed by the wavelet analysis. The VIC model has better performance on the variability simulation of the first level of DAHF.