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Abstract:
A biased coinflip Ansatz provides a stochastic regional scale land surface climate model of minimum complexity, which represents physical and stochastic properties of an ideal rainfall-runoff chain. The solution yields the empirically derived Schreiber formula as an Arrhenius-type equation of state W = exp(-D). It is associated with two thresholds and combines river runoff Ro, precipitation P and potential evaporation N as flux ratios, which represent water efficiency, W = Ro/P, and vegetation states, D = N/P. This stochastic rainfall-runoff chain is analyzed utilizing a global climate model (GCM) environment. The following results are obtained for present and future climate settings: (i) The climate mean rainfall-runoff chain is validated in terms of consistency and predictability, which demonstrate the stochastic rainfall-runoff chain to be a viable surrogate model for simulating means and variability of regional climates. (ii) Climate change is analyzed in terms of runoff sensitivity/elasticity and attribution measures. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
