Best fit probability distribution analysis of precipitation and potential evapotranspiration of India’s highly dense population state - Bihar

Abstract

Planning of water resources and its management with the ambiguity and non-uniformity accompanying with precipitation and other meteorological physical characteristics may perhaps effect on agricultural production in Bihar where the farmers mostly depend on precipitation. The precipitation and potential evapotranspiration temporal distribution of the state is irregular due to geomorphology, climatic and other anthropogenic factors of the state. In the present study, attempt is taken to expose the best-fit probability distribution among the various available probability distribution of annual average precipitation and potential evapotranspiration based on 102 year of past records of all 37 districts of the state. On the basis of ranks of goodness of fit tests such as Kolmogorov Smirnov, Anderson Darling and Chi-Squared, the normal distribution was observed the best-fit probability distribution for 11 districts followed by Weibull (3P) for 9 districts, the Beta distribution for 5 districts and other distribution for rest districts for precipitation. Whereas Cauchy distribution was come out with the best-fit probability distribution for potential evapotranspiration for all districts and the second best was Gamma (3P) covering almost 60% of the total districts followed by General Extreme Value distribution (32%). The results can be used in future hydraulic design, hydrological study for estimation of return period and water resource planners for policy development.