Dr Graeme Pearman, former chief of CSIRO atmospheric research has strongly criticised predictions that there will be good rain in the next few months.

Dr Pearman said predictions of rain late last year and again recently concerned him and were “pretty irresponsible”.

Trying to relieve the traumatic state farmers face “is not an excuse for making projections and suggesting that we will get rain when it’s not really scientifically possible to do that at this stage”, he said.

Dr Pearman does not think there is a high probability of more rain soon.

He praised the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) for “doing a responsible job” in trying to accurately transpose the uncertainty of the science.

“Others have extrapolated the statistics and are not accurately representing the science,” he said.

“It’s understandable they want to say something positive.

“However, they are bringing false hope to people already under enormous pressure and I think that’s wrong.”

For more than two thirds of NSW, the Bureau forecasts only a 50-60 per cent probability that rainfall will exceed the median, 60-70pc for the remainder.

NSW Department of Primary Industries climate research leader, Helen Fairweather, reported in Agriculture Today last month that the BoM’s 60-70pc prediction covers less than one third of the State, a region south of the Queensland border, bounded by Nyngan, Jervis Bay and the east coast.

A report commissioned last November to audit the effects of the drought in the Murray-Darling Basin said the situation was “unprecedentedly dangerous”.

Unless heavy rain, leading to runoff, falls in the basin catchment prior to mid-May 2007, there will be insufficient water available from July 1 for irrigation, the environment or few purposes other than critical urban supplies.

Forty percent of the food grown in Australia comes from the basin and irrigators and winemakers said food and wine prices would soar, while some economists feared heavy local job losses.

Water restrictions would directly affect 50,000 farmers who depend on the river system for their livelihoods and millions of people in Adelaide and the towns along the basin, between southern Queensland and South Australia.

For the latest weather developments, go to www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso