Changes in Antecedent Soil Moisture Modulate Flood Seasonality in a Changing Climate

Abstract Due to difficulties in identifying a climate change signal in flood magnitude, it has been suggested that shifts in flood timing, that is, the day of annual streamflow maxima, may be detectable. Here, we use high‐quality streamflow, largely free of snowmelt, from 221 catchments across Australia to investigate the influence of shifts in soil moisture and rainfall timing on annual streamflow maxima timing. In tropical areas we find that flood timing is strongly linked to the timing of both rainfall and soil moisture annual maxima. However, in southern Australia flood timing is more correlated with soil moisture maxima than rainfall maxima. The link between flood, soil moisture, and rainfall timing is confounded by event severity: For less extreme events flood timing is more likely to correspond to soil moisture timing, whereas rainfall timing becomes increasingly important as flood severity increases. Using circular regression to investigate nonstationarity, we find that flood timing is shifting to earlier in the year in the tropics and later in the year in the southwest of the continent, consistent with changes in mean and extreme rainfall and shifts in soil moisture timing due to tropical expansion. In southeast Australia, there is evidence that the mechanisms controlling flood seasonality are changing with a reversal of trends post Millennium Drought. Overall, changes in soil moisture timing, compared to changes in rainfall timing, are found to have a greater influence on changes in annual maxima streamflow flood timing.