Climate variability and flood frequency estimation for the Upper Mississippi and Lower Missouri rivers

ABSTRACT: This paper considers the distribution of flood flows in
the Upper Mississippi, Lower Missouri, and Illinois Rivers and
their relationship to climatic indices. Global climate patterns
including El Nino/Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation,
and the North Atlantic Oscillation explained very little of the
variations in flow peaks. However, large and statistically significant
upward trends were found in many gauge records along the
Upper Mississippi and Missouri Rivers: at Hermann on the Missouri
River above the confluence with the Mississippi (p = 2 percent),
at Hannibal on the Mississippi River (p