Technical note: An illustrative introduction to the domain dependence of spatial principal component patterns

Lehr, Christian; Hohenbrink, Tobias L.

doi:10.5194/hess-29-6735-2025

Articles | Volume 29, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-6735-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-6735-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 29, issue 22

Technical note

|

26 Nov 2025

Technical note |

| 26 Nov 2025

Technical note: An illustrative introduction to the domain dependence of spatial principal component patterns

Christian Lehr and Tobias L. Hohenbrink

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-6735-2025-supplement

Data sets

R-scripts to (i) explore the domain dependence (DD) of spatial Principal Components and (ii) calculate DD reference patterns Christian Lehr https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11213430

Model code and software

R-scripts to (i) explore the domain dependence (DD) of spatial Principal Components and (ii) calculate DD reference patterns Christian Lehr https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11213430

Short summary

In hydrology, domain dependence (DD) of spatial Principal Component patterns is a rather unknown feature of the widely applied Principal Component Analysis. It easily leads to wrong hydrological interpretations. DD reference patterns enable to differentiate from the effect. Here, we (1) explore the DD effect, (2) present two methods to calculate DD reference patterns and (3) discuss considering DD. Scripts with an introduction to the DD effect and an implementation of both methods are provided.