SOME COMMON FEATURES OF PROBABILITY-DISTRIBUTIONS FOR PRECIPITATION

This paper deals with various transformations commonly employed in order to obtain near normal distributions of precipitation data. In particular, we discuss the properties of the square-root-normal distribution and its relationship to the other commonly used two-parameter distributions. Similarities of different distributions are discussed with the aid of the normal probability graph and the moment-ratio diagram. The latter has the coefficient of variation on the abscissa and the coefficient of skewness on the ordinate. The examination of some historical data sets with the help of these diagrams demonstrates a large variety of forms, but also points to some of their common characteristics.