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Abstract The Qinling Mountains are the geographical dividing line between north and south of China, climate and underlying surface changes have a profound impact on runoff in the Qinling Mountains. This study attempts to identify the difference in runoff changes of two rivers in the south and north of China's south-north transitional zone under climate change. The Pettit test and Mann-Kendall test were used to investigate the abrupt change and trend analysis on runoff in the Ba River watershed and Jinqian River watershed from 1960 to 2014. The coupled energy-water balance equation based on the Budyko hypothesis estimated the climate and landscape elasticity of runoff followed by attribution analysis of runoff in these two watersheds. The results showed that annual runoff in the Jinqian River (in the southern Qinling Mountains) and the Ba River (in the northern Qinling Mountains) exhibited a significant decreasing trend at P