Rainfall–streamflow response times for diverse upland UK micro-basins: quantifying hydrographs to identify the nonlinearity of storm response

Abstract

While it is known that antecedent conditions and rainfall profiles contribute to the nonlinearity of streamflow response and that hydrograph shape can be dependent on the nature of rainfall inputs, how antecedent conditions (with similar rainfall inputs) impact hydrograph shape is less known. Here, a data-based mechanistic (DBM) approach is applied to quantify hydrograph shape, in terms of timing and volume, for the purposes of comparing hydrographs across 17 micro-basins at selected localities in upland UK over a 4-year period. The analysis demonstrates the nonlinearity of storm response for small catchments and revealed that with low antecedent conditions and/or small rainfall inputs there was a high variance in hydrograph shape quantifiers and that these variances decrease (at rates micro-basin dependent) as the micro-basins became wetter or as the storms increased in size, potentially converging to a more stable response.