Centre for Hydrology Senior Research Fellow Paul Whitfield has published a paper in Water Resources Research that shows precipitation is the dominant control on total annual streamflow and on the duration and severity of low flows in mountain rivers. However, mountain low flows are up to 2 times more sensitive than annual streamflow to temperature fluctuations and are very sensitive to winter temperatures above 0 °C as these conditions result in low snowpacks. Climate warming in these mountain catchments may cause more intense and longer low flow periods.