An evaluation of results of the climate outlook fora conducted in Southeast South America since 1997

lA series of climate outlook fora has begun in Montevideo, Uruguay in December 1997, in the middle of the last strong El Niño, with participation of the four countries of Mercosur region, i.e. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. The motivation has been the concern about ongoing El Niño in mid 1997, the availability of experimental climate forecast and the knowledge about the impact of past El Niño in the region. The other four meetings were conducted in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil (June 1998), Buenos Aires, Argentina (August 1998), Technical Commission of Salto Grande, Binational Argentina-Uruguay (December 1998) and Asuncion, Paraguay (March 1999). Participation included researchers from meteorology, agronomy, hydrology, oceanography, related environmental sciences, public health and social sciences, as well as users of agriculture, water resources management, hydroelectricity generation, civil defense and emergencies. The sponsorship came from different international organizations and research institutes involved in climate variability research, as well as universities and research institutes in the region, national weather services, water resources centers and hydropower plants, national and regional rural societies and other national and regional organizations. The backbone of the regional climate assessment has been the consensus agreement between coupled ocean-atmosphere model forecast, physically based statistical models and expert interpretation. The region considered included continental areas bounded from 20 to 40°S and east of the Andes to 47°W. The seasonal climate forecasts are expressed in probabilistic terms. For this purpose, three categories were identified: above normal, normal, and below normal, coinciding with a tercile distribution of historic temperature and precipitation records in the region. Homogeneous regions were identified in each case and the seasonal climate forecast was presented as the probability of occurrence of each of the three categories, during the upcoming 3-month period. This paper discusses the results of the different regional climate assessments for Southeast South America and presents maps indicating the regions with categorical agreement between observed and predicted seasonal rainfal