The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is commonly used to define periods of meteorological drought, particularly within the United States. This paper assesses the ability of the Hadley Centre general circulation model to predict the observed PDSI. An empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of the model-calculated PDSI and of the observations showed that the model is capable of reproducing the two leading observed modes and the link between the second observed mode and the El Nino-Southern Observation (ENSO). Drought events are defined as periods with low values of the PDSI and can be described in terms of their spatial and temporal extent and intensity. The long-duration control run of the Hadley Centre global model was used to determine the statistics of drought events on both a regional and global basis and these results were compared with observations. In addition, the link between regional drought and ENSO was evaluated for both model and observations.