Reply to comment on "Five decades of observed daily precipitation reveal longer and more variable drought events across much of the western United States"

Joel A. Biederman; Fangyue Zhang; Matthew P. Dannenberg; Dong Yan; Sasha C. Reed; William K. Smith

doi:10.1029/2023gl105124

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Reply to comment on "Five decades of observed daily precipitation reveal longer and more variable drought events across much of the western United States"

Joel A. Biederman·Fangyue Zhang·Matthew P. Dannenberg·Dong Yan·Sasha C. Reed·William K. Smith

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Abstract

Paciorek and Wehner raise important questions around our use of the Mann-Kendall nonparametric trend test on smoothed data for analyzing long-term hydrometeorological trends in Zhang et al. (2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020gl092293 ). We thank them for initiating this important conversation and their gracious cooperation in exploring the issues addressed in their comment. In this reply we confirm the inflation of significant p -values by our choice to smooth, illustrate the relatively minor impacts on the main conclusions of our paper, and add our voices to those of Paciorek and Wehner in highlighting the lack of methodology for hypothesis testing across multiple stations that have spatial structure (i.e., testing for regionally consistent trends).

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Journal of Geophysical Research Article

Source-reported bounding extent: 31.242672789119908° to 48.99550250125003° latitude; -124.719113482527° to -102.06791186487006° longitude. This indicates report coverage, not an exact sampling location. View area on OpenStreetMap.

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Joel A. Biederman, Fangyue Zhang, Matthew P. Dannenberg, Dong Yan, Sasha C. Reed, William K. Smith. 2024-01-04. Reply to comment on "Five decades of observed daily precipitation reveal longer and more variable drought events across much of the western United States". https://doi.org/10.1029/2023gl105124

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