Abstract: Detrending is a key step in the study of the scaling behaviors using Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA) to explore the long‐range correlation of hydrological series. However, the irregular periodicity and various trends within hydrological series as a result of integrated influences of human activities such as construction of water reservoirs and human withdrawal of freshwater and climate changes such as alterations of precipitation changes in both space and time make difficult the selection of detrending methods. In this study, we attempt to address the detrending problem due to the important theoretical and practical merits of detrending in DFA‐based scaling analysis. In this case, with focus on the irregularity of the periodic trends, a modified DFA, varying parameter DFA (VPDFA), and its combination with adaptive detrending algorithm (ADA) are employed to eliminate the influences of irregular cycles on DFA‐based scaling results. The results indicate that, for streamflow series with no more than 20 cycles, VPDFA is recommended; otherwise, the combined method has to be employed. Comparison study indicates that the scaling behavior of the detrended observed streamflow series by average removed method, when compared to those by DFA, VPDFA, and ADA, is the one of the periodic residues around the averaged annual cycle for the entire series rather than that excluding all annual cycles. However, although the result by VPDFA for short observed streamflow record can well correspond to that for numerically simulated series, the scaling behavior obtained by combined method analyzing long record looks strange and is different from that by numerical analysis. We attribute this difference to the complicated hydrological structure and the possible hydrological alternation due to the increasing integrated impacts of human activities and human activities with the extending record. How to include the most of the important factors into the detrending procedure is still a challenging task for further study in the analysis of the scaling behavior of hydrological processes.