Starting in 1997, Regional Climate Outlook Forums or RCOFs have taken place in various Latin American countries, in an effort to produce seasonal prediction products. The Forum is organized in Central America by the Regional Water Resources Committee (CRRH) since 2000, which is the technical secretariat of the Central American Integration System or SICA, and is responsible for the coordination of activities related to weather forecasts, climate, water resources, and climate change assessment. Since 2007, meetings after RCOF with different socioeconomic stakeholders take place to translate the probable climate impacts from predictions. A total of 41 RCOFs maps were assessed in this work. For that purpose 156 rain gauge stations, along with 689 and 17158 grid points from TRMM and CHIRPS data sets were used, respectively. Rainfall seasonal station accumulates were compared also with other three outlooks: Climate Predictability Tool outputs, previous RCOF month conditions persistence and one predicting always neutral conditions. Our results showed that RCOFs maps have an aggregate value to decision-makers, because they have skillful information most of the times. Outlooks based on an Always Neutral forecast had the worse median skill results for all cases, meaning that decisions taken without considering climate outlook information is worse than those taken in account the RCOF maps. Additionally, the inclusion of objective tools and given them a more specific weight in the consensus map production, could increase the RCOFs skill.
