Antecedent moisture enhances early warning of atmospheric river flood hazards

Atmospheric rivers are narrow bands of water vapor transport and serve as key drivers of water supplies and flood hazards in mid-latitude regions. The atmospheric river scale supports early-warning communication by ranking events from potentially beneficial to hazardous based on atmospheric forcing represented by water vapor transport magnitude and duration. However, the scale does not consider land-surface conditions that can influence how precipitation derived from water vapor translates into streamflow and flood hazards. Analyzing atmospheric river landfalls across catchments in California and central Chile, we show that divergences between atmospheric river rank and flood response are primarily explained by pre-existing soil moisture conditions. Based on this insight, we develop a simple modification to the atmospheric river scale that nearly doubles the scale’s correspondence with peak streamflow and increases the number of flood-generating atmospheric rivers classified as hazardous by more than 30%. These findings demonstrate that incorporating land-surface conditions can enhance early-warning hazard classification tools.