Does Antecedent Catchment Wetness Explain the Timing of Rainfall‐Runoff Relationship Shifts?

Abstract

Abstract Annual rainfall‐runoff relationships have been shown to shift during droughts and, in many catchments, not recover, resulting in less runoff per unit of precipitation than prior to the drought. While the cause of these shifts appears to be related to plant water use and subsurface water dynamics, it is still unclear which climatic conditions explain the timing of runoff shifts. The main objective of this study is to determine whether antecedent catchment wetness alone can explain the timing of shifts into and out of low runoff states. To do this, we explain the annual probability of being in a normal runoff state, as derived from Peterson et al..