CSIRO Drought Model ‘fails’

David Stockwell at Niche Modeling has completed his analysis of the CSIRO's Exceptional Circumstances Drought Report. His conclusion punctures the hyperbole of it's launch.

"In a statistical re-analysis of the data from the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report, all climate models failed standard internal validation tests for regional droughted area in Australia over the last century. The most worrying failure was that simulations showed increases in droughted area over the last century in all regions, while the observed trends in drought decreased in five of the seven regions identified in the CSIRO/Bureau of Meteorology report. Therefore there is no credible basis for the claims of increasing frequency of Exceptional Circumstances declarations made in the report. "  extract from: Niche Modeling

In a model of transparency that CSIRO could do well to follow, David has posted his R programming as well as access to the data sets that he extracted from CSIRO, so those with the skill can reproduce his results.