Investigation and Comparison of Hurst Exponent Estimation Methods in Trend and Seasonality Analysis of Hydro-Climatic Variables in Urmia Lake Bain (Case Study: Aji Chai Sub-basin)

Time series analysis methods have been detected as important tools for evaluating the issues related to water resources management. Spatial differences in streamflow trends can occur as a result of spatial differences in the changes in rainfall and temperature، spatial differences in the catchment characteristics and human activities and، trend analysis of this time series is necessary in causes of these differences. On the other hand، these series have a different structure، so that the successive values of them are interdependent. In this study has attempted to analyze of this time series for Aji Chai sub basin using of Seasonal Kendall method. In addition، Hurst exponent value، as an effective factor in trend and seasonality of time series، is also evaluated using Variance، R/S and DFA methods. The results showed a significant increasing trend for temperature and، both significant decreasing and increasing trend for precipitation at 10% significance level over sub basin. Also، for discharge، downstream stations showed significant decreasing trend. The analysis results of Hurst exponent estimation methods showed that precipitation and discharge time series have a relatively moderate long term persistence (H~0. 65). The Hurst phenomenon existence has also been confirmed as a factor affecting on the seasonality and trend of precipitation and discharge time series using α > 0. 5 exponent by DFA method.