Accepted Article Spatial and temporal patterns, trends and teleconnection of cumulative rainfall deficits across Central America Rudy Muñoz-Jiménez 1 , Juan Diego Giraldo-Osorio 2 , Alonso Brenes-Torres 3 , Isabel Avendaño- Flores 1 , Alexandra Nauditt 4 , Hugo G. Hidalgo-León 5,6 and Christian Birkel 1,7 1 Department of Geography, University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica. 2 Grupo de Investigación Ciencia e Ingeniería del Agua y el Ambiente, Departamento de Ingeniería Civil, Facultad de Ingeniería, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. 3 Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences FLACSO, San José, Costa Rica. 4 Institute for Technology and Resources Management in the Tropics and Subtropics, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany. 5 Center for Geophysical Research, University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica. 6 School of Physics, University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica. 7 Northern Rivers Institute, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Corresponding author: christian.birkel@ucr.ac.cr This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1002/joc.5925