Drought in the “Sunburnt Country”

Ian Castles has published—as a tribute to Dorothea Mackellar's poem, My Country (often known from a line in its second verse as 'A Sunburnt Country'), published just one hundred years ago today—a typically well-mannered but meticulous criticism of the CSIRO's paper on the future incidence of drought in Australia. Ian detects, and documents, the CSIRO authors' habits of ignoring pertinent but inconvenient criticism and points to some not-quite-credible claims that the CSIRO authors have previously published—in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment report.

It defies belief that the range of rainfall change in 2080 (relative to 1990) from all of these scenarios and models could be from minus 27 per cent to plus 54 per cent for “Northern NSW, Tasmania and central Northern Territory” - and yet be from minus 80 per cent (i.e. one-fifth of the 1990 level) to nil “within 400 km of western and southern coasts”   [From One hundred years of drought and flooding rains - On Line Opinion]