Abstract
Understanding the flood generating mechanisms that influence flood
seasonality in a region provides information on setting up relevant
contingency measures. While former studies had estimated flood
seasonality at regional/continental scale, limited/no studies had
investigated the climate/basin drivers that influence the changes in
flood seasonality. Considering this, the current study performed two
analysis i) estimated the changes in the seasonality of annual maximum
floods (AMF) between pre- and post-1970 across Hydroclimate Data Network
basins over the coterminous United States, and ii) identified the
predictors that influence the change in the seasonality from a set of
climate and geomorphic variables. Significant changes in the AMF
seasonality were noted for approximately half of the basins in the
eastern US while low to no change was found in a majority of the basins
in the central/western US. We found that a decrease (increase) in the
seasonality index, indicating floods arriving more uniformly (more
concentrated in time), is typically associated with an increase in the
precipitation (temperature) in basins where a strong change in flood
seasonality occurs. Elevation has a more dominant role as compared to
the drainage area in changing the flood seasonality as the former
affects the form of precipitation in basins in higher elevations. This
is particularly true for western US where floods arrive more distributed
over the year (i.e., decrease in flood seasonality index), which
potentially indicates increased warming resulting in early snowmelt.