More Frequent, Faster, and Seasonally Reorganized Drought‐to‐Pluvial Transitions in U.S. Cities

Abstract Hydroclimatic variability is projected to intensify under continued warming, yet the evolving likelihood, rapidness, and seasonal timing of drought‐to‐pluvial transitions remain poorly quantified. Here, we develop a probabilistic framework that integrates a severity‐resolved Markov formulation to estimate conditional drought‐to‐pluvial transition probabilities, Event Coincidence Analysis to quantify Relief Time (TR; the interval between drought amelioration and subsequent pluvial onset), and circular statistics to characterize the seasonal timing of post‐drought pluvial occurrence. We apply this framework to the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index derived from a 20‐member ensemble of downscaled climate‐model projections for 27 U.S. cities representing all nine National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Regions. Results reveal a systematic reorganization of drought‐to‐pluvial dynamics under future warming. For severe drought thresholds, drought‐to‐pluvial transitions increase by approximately 132%–154%, while severe drought states increase by 128%–203% relative to historical conditions. Across most cities, Relief Time shortens by 0.1–0.3 months, indicating increasingly abrupt transitions from drought to wet conditions. Seasonal timing also reorganizes, with the first post‐drought pluvial event shifting by approximately 1–3 months in many regions. Joint changes in transition probability and TR reveal distinct regional acceleration regimes characterized by increasing transition frequency, increasing abruptness, or both. The findings indicate that future drought recovery may increasingly occur through faster, more frequent, and seasonally altered transitions to wet conditions. The proposed framework provides transferable metrics for diagnosing drought‐to‐pluvial behavior and offers actionable insights for flood‐risk assessment, water‐resource management, and climate adaptation under a warming climate.