A general differential split-sample test to select sub-periods of discontinuous years gathering similar to different...

This article introduces a Matlab© code to implement the General Differential Split Sample Test (GDSST) (Dakhlaoui et al. [5]). As an illustration, the GDSST is applied to five catchments in northern Tunisia over 30-year reference period and compared to three benchmark Split Sample Test (SST) methods. The techniques are compared as regards to the number of validation exercises and to the differences in temperature (ΔT) and precipitation (ΔP) between the sampled sub-periods, whose length was set to 8-year. The GDSST allows a larger number of discontinuous periods to be sampled, and is computationally more effective than the basic bootstrap to identify the most climatically contrasting conditions. In addition, the GDSST offers a larger continuum of climatic conditions and a better spread of validation periods than the benchmark techniques, which is essential to test the parameter transferability of hydrological models. As supplementary material, a package file containing MATLAB© scripts to run the three benchmark SSTs and the proposed GDSST, as well as an application example on the five catchments, can be freely downloaded.•An enhanced split-sample test based on an oriented bootstrap to assess transferability of hydrological models.•The proposed split-sample test is computationally more effective than the basic bootstrap to identify the most climatically contrasting conditions.•MATLAB© code of the proposed GDSST and four benchmark SST, with application example.