Trends in monthly, seasonal, and annual fluctuations in flood peaks for the upper Dniester River

Abstract

The importance of the Dniester River in the socio-economic life of Moldova and Ukraine necessitates research into the main trends in the river’s runoff characteristics and dynamics, especially now, when climate change is significantly altering the water regime of rivers. This paper presents a solution for the problems of identifying the main trends in daily maximum river discharge by seasons and months for various calculation intervals. Two calculation intervals (1981-1998; 1999-2015) with different climatic conditions are considered. Each interval corresponds to one complete cycle of river water discharge. Climatic conditions as a result of global warming are changing differently in the mountains and on the plain, therefore, the identification of trends was performed separately for the alpine and lowland parts of the Dniester River annual runoff formation zone. The search for statistically significant trends was carried out by means of the MannKendall test. The analysis of the frequency of maximum discharges (peak over threshold; POT3) was performed for selected rivers in the studied area. The earlier period (1981-1998) showed statistically significant positive trends for both alpine and lowland rivers of the Upper Dniester. The later period (1999-2015) differed, exhibiting exclusively negative significant trends in daily peaks both by months and by seasons. This result indicates a persistent tendency toward decreasing maximum water runoff for all rivers of the Upper Dniester catchment. There were no statistically significant trends in the frequency of floods.