TY - JOUR
T1 - Precipitation and evapotranspiration controls on daily runoff variability in the contiguous United States and Puerto Rico
AU - Rossi, Matthew W.
AU - Whipple, Kelin
AU - Vivoni, Enrique
N1 - Funding Information:
USHCN daily precipitation data can be acquired from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (http://cdiac. ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn.html). GHCN daily precipitation data can be acquired from the National Climatic Data Center (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ climate/ghcn-daily/). HCDN-2009 and GAGES II daily streamflow data can be acquired from the U.S. Geological Survey (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis). PRISM climate normals can be acquired from the PRISM Climate Group, Oregon State University (http://prism.oregonstate.edu) for the contiguous U.S. For Puerto Rico, PRISMdata can be acquired fromClimate Source Inc. (http://www.climatesource. com/). We want to thank T. Dunne for valuable discussion and feedback. We thank two anonymous reviewers, G. Tucker, and the AE K. Michaelides for constructive reviews that improved the quality of this manuscript. This work was supported by funding from the Geomorphology and Land Use Dynamics program at NSF (EAR-0921705 to KXW).
Publisher Copyright:
©2015. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - Daily runoff variability is an important driver of fluvial erosion but is difficult to incorporate into landscape evolution models due to limited observations and incomplete understanding of hydroclimatic controls on runoff distributions. Prior work in the contiguous U.S. showed how limitations can be overcome when mean runoff is correlated with the shape of the right tail of runoff distributions. However, which probability distribution functions best capture geomorphically important events and whether patterns in the contiguous U.S. transfer to other settings remain important open questions. Our analysis of large hydroclimatic data sets from the contiguous U.S. and Puerto Rico reveals that stretched exponential distributions provide a common probabilistic framework to evaluate daily rainfall and runoff variability. In both settings, daily runoff variability is correlated with the evapotranspiration ratio, aridity index, and the ratio of wet to dry days. Surprisingly, mean storm depth (estimated from average daily precipitation during wet days only) and storm depth variability are uncorrelated with daily runoff variability in either data set. These findings suggest that first-order controls on runoff variability are processes that reduce runoff during intermediate frequency flows rather than processes that enhance the magnitude of rare floods. However, by normalizing local runoff variability by storm depth variability, some correlations collapse onto a single trend for the contiguous U.S. and Puerto Rico, suggesting a secondary role for rainfall variability on runoff variability. Taken together, this analysis provides a rationale for how hydroclimatic controls on runoff variability can be better incorporated into landscape evolution models from readily available data.
AB - Daily runoff variability is an important driver of fluvial erosion but is difficult to incorporate into landscape evolution models due to limited observations and incomplete understanding of hydroclimatic controls on runoff distributions. Prior work in the contiguous U.S. showed how limitations can be overcome when mean runoff is correlated with the shape of the right tail of runoff distributions. However, which probability distribution functions best capture geomorphically important events and whether patterns in the contiguous U.S. transfer to other settings remain important open questions. Our analysis of large hydroclimatic data sets from the contiguous U.S. and Puerto Rico reveals that stretched exponential distributions provide a common probabilistic framework to evaluate daily rainfall and runoff variability. In both settings, daily runoff variability is correlated with the evapotranspiration ratio, aridity index, and the ratio of wet to dry days. Surprisingly, mean storm depth (estimated from average daily precipitation during wet days only) and storm depth variability are uncorrelated with daily runoff variability in either data set. These findings suggest that first-order controls on runoff variability are processes that reduce runoff during intermediate frequency flows rather than processes that enhance the magnitude of rare floods. However, by normalizing local runoff variability by storm depth variability, some correlations collapse onto a single trend for the contiguous U.S. and Puerto Rico, suggesting a secondary role for rainfall variability on runoff variability. Taken together, this analysis provides a rationale for how hydroclimatic controls on runoff variability can be better incorporated into landscape evolution models from readily available data.
KW - aridity index
KW - evapotranspiration
KW - hydroclimatic variability
KW - rainfall-runoff transformation
KW - statistical distributions
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U2 - 10.1002/2015JF003446
DO - 10.1002/2015JF003446
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84958763222
SN - 2169-9003
VL - 121
SP - 128
EP - 145
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
IS - 1
ER -