Future shift of the relative roles of precipitation and temperature in controlling annual runoff in the conterminous United States

This study examines the relative roles of climatic variables in altering annual runoff in the conterminous United States (CONUS) in the 21st century, using a monthly ecohydrological model (the Water Supply Stress Index model, WaSSI) driven with historical records and future scenarios constructed from 20 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate models. The results suggest that precipitation has been the primary control of runoff variation during the latest decades, but the role of temperature will outweigh that of precipitation in most regions if future climate change follows the projections of climate models instead of the historical tendencies. Besides these two key factors, increasing air humidity is projected [...]