Keirnan J. A. Fowler

Hydrologic models are essential tools to understand and plan for the effect of changing climates; however, they underperform in transitory climate conditions. Existing research identifies models' inadequacy to perform during prolonged drought, but falls short on pinpointing which specific aspects of model performance are affected. We study five conceptual rainfall‐runoff models and their performance in 155 Australian catchments which recently experienced a 13‐year long drought. We use a wide range of performance metrics and a methodology based on ranked differences to a benchmark to fairly compare levels of degradation across metrics and periods. We show model performance degrading extensively during and after the drought, largely driven by overestimation of flow. Representation of shape and variability of hydrograph and flow‐duration curve are more resilient to the prolonged dry climate and rarely more degraded during the multi‐annual drought that on isolated dry years in the pre‐drought record. Conversely, volumetric error suffers from significant exacerbation over the multiple subsequent dry years. This indicates that catchment retention times and rates of storage depletion storage are significantly less affected by the drought than amounts of streamflow produced, pointing to a mismatch between reduction of influxes and out‐fluxes during the drought. We also identify a deficiency of models to delay and remove flow before it reaches the stream and keep track of moisture deficits over multiple dry seasons. By promoting rigorous investigation of models' shortcomings, we hope to foster the development of more robust model structures and/or calibration frameworks to improve applicability within climate change scenarios.