I'm a medical oncologist and I give treatment to patients who present with kidney cancer early on, as well as taking care of patients where the cancer has spread. So here are my disclosures, probably the most important is I'm the study chair of one of the big trials that I'm discussing, and I just wanted to define what I'm considering locally advanced kidney cancer because I think there's different definitions, but what I'm really speaking about here are either kidney cancers that are based on their stage or local spread are at risk for recurrence, but in general I'm talking about cancer that we're trying to remove completely and what can we do after that. And there's several ways that we try to determine when you have your kidney cancer removed, what's your risk for recurrence, and one of the most important is basically your tumor stage. So that's based on the size of the cancer, whether you have any lymph node involvement, whether it's invading any of the structures within the kidney like the collecting system where the urine drips out or the blood vessels, whether you have any metastases, whether the nucleus in the actual cancer cell looks like it's actively dividing. But we also have prognostic nomograms, which Dr. Abel referred to just a few minutes ago, which are kind of using the stage, using the grade, but also using other things like whether there's dead tissue in the tumor, whether somebody isn't feeling well, whether their hemoglobin is low, and so people have developed these kind of statistical tools that we think in some cases might also give us a better indication than just stage alone. And so what's adjuvant therapy? So I like to say that it's treatment that we're giving to try to eradicate little bits of cancer cells that might still be present in the body, but that are too small to see on a scan. You could also think about it, though, in terms of, and I think we're broadening our diagnosis, there might even be people where you know for sure that you left disease behind, the margins are positive, or you might see a little bit of disease that you can't get to. But the ultimate goal I think should be that we want to cure disease in patients who ordinarily wouldn't be cured by surgery alone. So that's what I think is the overarching goal of adjuvant therapy. And we use the drugs that we use in metastatic disease commonly to, after they've been looked at in metastatic disease, we then look at them earlier and say, okay, it helped in metastatic disease, is it going to help in an earlier situation? And so this, I can't get the pointer to work, but this is, there it goes. There's really kind of three broad classes of drugs that we use in kidney cancer treatment. The most common are what we call the VEGF inhibitors. These are drugs that target blood vessels. There's the immunotherapy. I'm going to show some more detailed slides. And then the mTOR agents, and they're sort of grouped by these different classes and stuff. And let's talk first about the anti-angiogenesis drug. So kidney cancer in general is very vascular. There's lots of blood vessels. And in a lot of patients, there's a gene that's located on the third chromosome called the von Hippolinda gene that is dysregulated. It's turned off and it kind of makes cancers form and cancers be more vascular. So the discovery of this 20, 25 years ago led eventually to the development of drugs that would target blood vessels, target the endothelial cells, the cells that line blood vessels. And this was really an incredible breakthrough. The first of these drugs got FDA approved in about 2004. And these are the majority of the pill therapies that you associated with treatment for kidney cancer. So you may know them by their commercial names. Sinitinib is a sutent. Bevacizumib is Avastin. Pzopinib is Votrient. There's also Enlida. There's a lot of these drugs. But in the advanced disease stage in metastatic disease, these drugs, these are curves showing the top curve means that there are more patients free of disease versus less patients. And so you can see that in each of these cases, these drugs really performed either better than a standard immune therapy which was used and is still around interferon or whether versus a sugar pill. And roughly 80% of patients will benefit from these drugs if they have metastatic disease. And so it really made sense to go back and look at these drugs in the earlier settings. So these are drugs in all three of these categories. But we're going to talk about the VEGF therapies first. That showed a benefit or I shouldn't say have been tested for benefit or are undergoing testing for benefit. And so far there have been seven trials conducted adjuvantly using these VEGF inhibitors or what we call an mTOR inhibitor. Everest is in here. Avirulimus is an mTOR inhibitor. The rest of these are vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitors. And one of the ways that we look at whether a drug is active is we have to look at a time point that's close to the period of time that you're testing the drug. So we often use something called DFS which is disease-free survival or recurrence-free survival which would be RFS. And this is important to talk about because this is a really easy time point to mention. So if you can show that you're delaying recurrence maybe that means you're benefiting from the drug. But I would argue that overall survival is probably a pretty important endpoint and when we get into the immune checkpoint inhibitors later on in what I'm talking about here you'll see why there may be a really good rationale to look at the immunotherapy agents. So let's review the trials that have been completed recently and the trials that one of my slide down at the bottom is not going to show. So there's four trials that have been reported recently. One of them was the Assure trial which I'm the study chair of. There was the Protect trial. There's Estrack and down below this, sorry about this with the science, there's something called the Atlas trial. So Assure was a trial that looked at two drugs, Sutent and Nexivar and there were three groups of patients treated or I should say three arms of the study. So this included some patients with smaller cancers so cancers that were a little bit smaller but they had higher nuclear grade and so there was some risk for recurrence as well as larger cancers including those that involved lymph nodes. We enrolled patients who had clear cell cancer but we all also allowed a smaller population that didn't have clear cell that had papillary or chromophobe or you know some of the other kidney cancers and everybody was treated for one year and everybody had to take all of these pills so in order for it to be a blinded study they had to take pills that were labeled as Sutent, pills that were labeled as Nexivar and pills that were labeled I mean and some of them were placebo so everybody took four pills of Sutent and four pills of Nexivar so they were taking eight pills a day and one group got all sugar pills one group got Sutent with sugar pills of Nexivar and the other group got sugar pills of Sutent with real Nexivar so that's how we kept all of the doctors and all the patients sort of in the dark about what they were getting and we can talk a little bit more about the use of placebo later but virtually all of the trials that have been done with the VEGF inhibitors have used placebo. Protect did the same thing they used but they allowed cancers that were bigger than seven centimeters and they got either Votrient or a sugar pill that said Votrient on it. S-Track used Sutent same kind of category as protect bigger tumors generally with invasive features and got either Sutent or a sugar pill that said Sutent and Atlas which has only had a press release it has not been published yet so we haven't seen the data sort of you know all of the granular details but Atlas was using Exitnib or in LIDA and what was interesting about this one is same kind of patient population is protect but they could get in LIDA for as short as a year but for as long as three years and they also included you know in our country there's been a much higher proportion of white people participating in trials not as many African-Americans not as many Asians Atlas included a lot of people from Asia so it will give a lot of useful information both about duration of therapy you know whether longer than a year or and also just patients of different races so this was the end points and again we show what we call a Kaplan-Meier curve what you what you really want to see here is that everybody's everybody from each of these colors whether it's Sutent, Seraphina or placebo it's all one line you don't really see much separation so we really didn't see a benefit with this trial to these drugs for a year protect there's a little bit of separation of the curve but when you look at the statistics in the long run there was also not a benefit S track when you looked at it there was a benefit and the benefit was statistically significant and what they saw was that the disease free survival improved by about a year so if you took Sutent and you you your cancer took about a year longer to come back if you looked at the whole population and everybody was interested because the benefit the curves seem to be split a little bit longer but look at this this is the overall survival for each of these studies and you can see that in each of these the curves are pretty flat so it's not in the long run making a big difference in how long people are living if they get adjuvant therapy and that bothers us and bothered me a lot because I mean obviously I was very disappointed that the trial I ran didn't show a benefit after 2000 patients participated and you know this one trial basically showed a benefit and the other three trials I should say Atlas did not show a benefit in the press release so we have three really large trials and one smaller that didn't show benefit and one larger smaller rather industry trial that did show a benefit so based on the S track data the FDA in this country did vote to approve Sutent and this is the National Comprehensive Cancer Network is a kind of a governing body that kind of gives advice about how often to scan people and you know what based based on evidence you know what are the best treatments and stuff so they did list adjuvant Sutent but they listed it as a category to be which means that they considered some of the evidence to be lower level basically because there were three trials that said no benefit and one trial that did show benefit so it is available as a therapy but I think there's a lot of us that still wonder you know what what should we do in this scenario and the European Medicines Agency actually voted not to approve so different parts of the world feel differently about the trial results so why did one trial show benefit whereas the others did not so at least because I could I went back and looked at at the Assure trial and we had had we had well over a thousand patients I think it was it was it was close to 1500 patients that had just clear cell didn't have non clear so so this was already a pre-specified endpoint and we looked in and you can see it's kind of interesting while people are on treatment you can see a little bit of separation of the curves but then it really is still negative when when you look at this population and we went back and we looked at we said okay we're going to look at just the group of patients that were entered on S-track as far as stage and clear cell and we still didn't see a difference in ours and then we said well could it be the dose you know ours was the first trial that opened people didn't have as much experience handling the side effects of the medicine could it be that so we went back and looked at different dosing quartiles so the people that got the full dose are quartile one the people that got a lot of dose reductions or interruptions are quartile four and quartile four is sort of you know maybe a little bit of an outlier here but the bottom line is when you look at all these dosing quartiles the dose in our trial really did not explain why our trial was a negative trial for sure so then this is some data on the protect trial which is votrient and again I should say the assured trial and the protect trial both started out at full dose and because so many patients had side effects and so many patients dropped out we lowered the starting dose in each of these to start at a slightly lower dose and then if it was tolerable people could go up on the dose and so protected the same thing and in that population you can see that the people that managed to stay on the full dose there was a little bit of an improvement in disease free survival but if you looked at the whole group I know the curves are split here a little bit but statistically it it did not show an overall benefit but what's really interesting here is in the protect trial which is votrient the company actually did in in about several hundred people I think it was about 200 250 they actually did blood tests measuring drug levels so they did it when they first started early on and they also did another one at eight weeks so the early trough is about four to five weeks the late trough is about eight weeks into the study and you can see that if they had a higher if they achieved a higher dose of votrient in the bloodstream they actually did benefit but the thing that was really complicated is that the drug level did not correspond to side effects and it also didn't correspond to the dose so it was really hard to predict you know there were people these are mainly patients that that had the 600 dosing so three pills instead of four pills but it was very hard to determine if you took those three pills whether you're going to get a higher drug level or not so probably has something to do with the metabolism and unfortunately we don't really have assays to that are well developed to kind of use these and say okay I'm going to check a drug level and you know you should definitely stay on this drug and and and so that's that's really a quandary because some people had really bad side effects and had high drug drug levels other people had almost no side effects and had high drug levels or vice versa so it's really a very complicated story and so you know this is basically what I'm trying to say we went back looked at our data there was no difference even when you went and looked at the eligibility criteria similar to astrak and in protect these drug levels did not correlate with dose or toxicity but if you achieved a higher drug level it did improve your survival rate but of course we haven't looked at this with overall survival so again overall survival is is important and and I think what's most troubling when we look at the veg of inhibitors using them as adjuvant therapy is we really saw a lot of side effects and so grade three means a pretty serious side effected side effect that means you need to stop drug or hold the drug and readjust the dose it could be really severe diarrhea like six seven times a day it could be really hard to control blood pressure so that you had to have a whole bunch of drug blood pressure medicines it could be that you got a blood clot it could be you know a lot of different things but it was something that involved a complicated medical maneuver and you can see that over 56% of patients on all three of these trials had side effects and one of the speculations is that because there isn't a lot of cancer sitting there the drugs are going after your normal cells not after your cancer and so maybe some of that is why people are reporting more side effects or maybe it's also when you're an adjuvant population and your cancer is removed you expect to feel better so these are side effects I retooled slide that Lauren Harshman kindly lent me and I because we have a later one with the immune therapy that I'll show you but these are basically side effects that you can get with these drugs and this is a picture of a hand-foot skin reaction so you can get calluses in the feet or hand sore feet and you can get blisters that show up so that was a troubling side effect on this trial you can get mouth sores I would say my patients probably complain the most about tiredness taste changes or unpredictable bowel movements as sort of the biggest things that really annoy them about these drugs so well other reasons the studies could have been different industry sponsor versus cooperative group the area of the country they were looking at it how how much how frequently we were looking at scans when you know how much help and managing the doses there's there's many things and I'm not sure we're going to ever going to know but fortunately there's a couple of other trials that have yet to report sources looking at one to three years of seraphimib we're expecting that Tim Eisen is going to be able to prevent present this data soon the evidence ever as trial is looking at an mTOR inhibitor which is a finitor and they did measure drug levels so that that should be interesting and then this is a trial for patients who've had metastatic disease removed asking if a year of vortient versus placebo could help prevent recurrence and we think that the results of that will be available sometime next year so what are my choices if I have a kidney cancer about to be removed or just removed that's at risk for recurrence there are four immune checkpoint inhibitor trials which I'm going to talk about there's adjuvant suit tent and importantly surveillance is still a very good option for a lot of people and we usually recommend imaging every six months for the first three years and then yearly for two years and then you stop with the imaging but continue follow-up with your primary care doctor or your oncologist just to look for symptoms so what was really revolutionary two years ago was that Nebula Mab or Optivo as many of you will know from the television commercials was tested in a trial in patients that had previously had a VEGF TKI such as suit tent or vortient and what they showed was really importantly they looked at overall survival and they showed that there was a big improvement in overall survival in patients that got Optivo over a virulimus or a finitor which was a commonly used drug in this space so that led to the FDA approval and that of course led to using these drugs earlier on so how do these drugs work so this is another slide that that Lauren lent me and and what it what it says is that typically in cancer a T cell will sort of hijack viruses or bacteria but what the immune checkpoint inhibitors do is they kind of rev up the immune system and they make the T lymphocytes in your body have a greater potential to recognize things that are foreign and so instead of just recognizing viruses they say oh yeah the cancer looks different from the normal cells let's go after the cancer and so these drugs are you know widely available and approved now and lung cancer kidney cancer melanoma list goes on and on had a cellular carcinoma they're really being looked at in many different tumors types and what I think what the patients love is that we're not seeing as much that the incidence of getting side effects appears to be much lower and then you're seeing these survival benefits not just disease-free survival and this is another drug that that I mentioned because this is in some of the trials and it has now been approved in combination with nivolumab epilumumab also known as your voice works in kind of a parallel pathway to the immune checkpoint inhibitors and it can kind of heighten the response it by itself when it's used in kidney cancer has not shown as much of a benefit but it seems to increase the number of responses at least when it's used with nivolumab the problem is that you can also get a little bit more side effects with it so these are four clinical trials that are open and enrolling and I'm going to talk about each of these this is the prosper trial and what's really unique about prosper is that this is a trial that you would need to go on before your kidney cancer was removed the emotion trial is so this is this uses nivolumab and importantly it's the one-armed patients get nivolumab they get it before surgery for a couple weeks and then they go on to get their cancer resected and then they get another nine months of nivolumab if you're assigned to get the surgical treatment and not nivolumab you don't have to be on a placebo you can basically go straight to your surgery and then be monitored so we really like the design of this trial and we think the patients like the design the emotion trial is looking at a tizolusumab versus it does have a placebo control but what's nice about these three the emotion the keynote which is ketruda or pembrolusumab and the checkmate which is ipinevo or urvoy and optivo versus placebo is that all of these are available to patients after their surgery if they have high-risk disease and are within three months of having their surgery so prosper allows patients who have any kind of kidney cancer it doesn't have to be clear cell obviously you're not going to know because you have a scan showing it these you have to have clear cell but you also this is also open to patients who if you had surgery and your kidney cancer comes back within a year and it's removable you can still go on this trial so it's available all three of these are available even if your cancer comes back within the next year and it's a receptable so digging down a little bit deeper the prosperous trial has to have a biopsy up front and there's a couple reasons for that and that is mainly we really want to make sure it's safe that you actually have cancer and that you have kidney cancer before you get treated now the way this was set up initially is everybody had to have a biopsy there's an amendment going through right now that what will happen is if you have a cancer that's seven centimeters or greater on your scans you you can then enter the trial you can be randomized and if you're randomized to the nivolum ab you still have to have the biopsy but if you are randomized to just go to surgery alone you don't have to have the biopsy because you're going to have a bigger biopsy when your cancer is removed and this has also been modernized now that nivolum ab or octivo is available as a four week dosing this has been changed so that you get one dose ahead of time and this has been changed that you can get the nivolum ab once a month so that also cuts down on the time you have to go back and forth and obviously if you're on the observation arm you get close follow-up scans same as the as this arm you're watched very closely but you don't have to get a placebo and why would you want to get this beforehand well the reason that you might that we think it might be important to get the drug before your kidney cancer is removed is the drug has to educate your lymphocytes about what to go after so if you've already taken the kidney tumor out and you just have a little bit of cancer left over then maybe there isn't enough to teach your lymphocytes to go after it but if you give a couple of doses or one dose before you get the kidney tumor out then you're teaching all the cells to go after hey this is the bad guy this is what we want to go after so that was the rationale for giving a dose before surgery these are two of the other trials the emotion trial just to give you a little bit more detail it's a Tizolusumab on emotion is every three weeks for a year and it's it's clear cell and keynote pretty similar design design kitruda or pembroluzumab I don't have a slide for the ipi nevo but if we go back a couple slides I think what's important here is you're getting these drugs you're getting them every six weeks rather than three weeks and you're getting them for six months not a year that's in but you're getting two drugs rather than one and so what are the risks so I think what we like about immune checkpoint inhibitors is they don't that by and far most people don't have side effects but if you get a side effect it can be pretty scary so you can get some pretty wild autoimmune effects it can affect the pituitary gland which can affect a whole bunch of things like your adrenal gland your thyroid gland or you could also get some very you know unusual side effects like making liver inflammation making the pancreas inflamed getting diabetes I would say by and far the most common side effects are rash and tiredness that's about 15% of the population so still it's 15% versus a 60% getting side effects so I'm going to end here but basically just say my conclusions are the US use of the veg f drugs in the adjuvant setting still is controversial since it's not showing an overall survival benefit but the disease-free survival benefit did for extract did lead to the approval of adjuvants who tend and you just have to keep in mind that there were a lot of side effects in patients on this and so it's not for everybody maybe we will get some more details about who will benefit importantly we have these new trials with these immune checkpoint drugs which we hope will inform us about their role and we hope that they will lead to benefit but it remains to be tested and if you know anybody that hasn't had their kidney cancer surgery yet the prosper trial is is really a good option as well and the bottom line your choices are these four clinical trials adjuvant suit tent or close surveillance so happy to entertain any questions


So, we continue our discussion on seasonal transitions today, where in the last class we have already talked about the onset over Kerala. After the monsoon onset over Kerala which is short MOK, the monsoon advances across the Indian region and at the end of the onset phase the entire region comes under the sway of the monsoon. So, you may recall these are the dates from India Med Department of the onset dates over different regions. This is the date, this is when the monsoon onset occurs over Kerala. After that there is this, during the onset phase it propagates northward as well as westward and eventually by 1st of July most of the region is under the sway of the monsoon. This is 15th of July. So, these are the mean dates calculated by India Meteorological Department by looking at the onset date, looking at the rainfall, mean rainfall patterns and taking the centre of the penta during which onset occurred as the onset date. Now, the northward advance over the subcontinent from its commencement over Kerala and its culmination over the western part of the Indian monsoon zone takes about 40 to 45 days as we have seen this is 1st of June and this is 15th of July. So, the northward advance takes about 40 to 45 days and advance generally involves several northward propagations each pushing the limit of the monsoon farther northward. Now, we have already seen this when we looked at the satellite pictures of the cloud bands and how they propagate. As the monsoon advances over India major changes occur in the subtropical jet stream which in the winter and pre monsoon seasons has its core to the south of the Himalayas and is very strong and this subtropical jet stream shifts to the north. Now, this is something we have seen when we saw the difference between the summer monsoon and the previous season. See, in winter the subtropical jet stream comes over us and that is why Delhi is part of the mid latitude weather regime in winter. So, we have the subtropical jet stream coming over us and this is the air circulation at 3 kilometers even at 3 kilometers you see very strong western events this is the Tibetan plateau. So, the western jet the mid latitude western is which penetrate over the Indian region the jets actually splits part of it goes north of Tibetan plateau and part of it comes south. Now, why is there a split because this Tibetan plateau is 5 kilometers. So, we are looking at winds at 3 kilometers they cannot penetrate the plateau. So, they have to go around here and so you see these subtropical jet in winter comes like this. Now, if we look at the mean 200 millibar streamlines which is up in the upper troposphere for January then you will see that in January at 200 millibars also the winds are westerly. Now, there of course, a directly flowing over the Tibetan plateau which is lower than the 200 millibar level. So, this is the westerly wind what happens during the monsoon what happens during the monsoon is that the westerly flows entirely to the north of Tibetan region and to the south we have easterly flow this is the tropical easterly jet. In fact, what you have here is a subtropical ridge which we will talk about. So, you get the formation of a subtropical ridge in the middle and upper troposphere. So, this is high pressure now the lower pressure in the upper levels is here. So, naturally because of geography the winds will be easterly and this is the tropical easterly jet which was discovered by Koteshwaram in 1950. So, we have a transition from purely westerly flow here to easterly flow. So, the westerly flow in the upper levels get replaced by easterly flow during the summer monsoon. So, it has been shown that there is a shift of the subtropical ridge at 150 HPA from about 17 degrees latitude on day minus 20 in a composite of several years with MOK as 0 day to about 26 north on day plus 15. So, he is talking now of this ridge he is saying that about 20 days before the onset of the monsoon if you look at a composite made with saying that MOK is taking MOK as 0 day then on minus 20 it is around 17 and 5 days after the onset it goes to 26. So, you have see this is the latitude here this is about 26 or so. So, it comes to 26 from about 17. So, you see the shift of the subtropical jet before the subtropical ridge before the monsoon. Now, to remember that this high pressure region in fact marks the region where the pressure is low and you have a lot of convective clouds at the lower levels. Now rapid shift of the latitude of the ridge occurs only after MOK the easterly that 150 HPA spread northward with the shifting of the ridge resulting in the establishment of tropical easterly jet stream through peninsular India. So, we have the establishment of tropical easterly jet stream. Now, so this is an important feature and we will come to this when we talk of hiatus during the advance or temporary stalling of the advance of the monsoon which is observed in many many years. Now, let us go back to the dates of onset and see that the onset over Mumbai this is Bombay onset over Mumbai is around 10th June and this is 1st of June. So, the after the onset on Kerala the monsoon travels northward there is an advance of monsoon northward and by 10th of June the onset occurs in Mumbai. This is the mean picture now the average travel time of monsoon from Kerala to Mumbai is 8 days which is about 1 degree latitude per day. Remember that the average northward movement of the cloud bands that we saw also was about 1 degree latitude per day. So, this is a typical time of northward movement of cloud bands and its standard deviation is about 7 days the extreme values are 29 and minus 7 days the a negative value means that the monsoon has set in over Mumbai earlier than it does over Kerala and such a situation occurred in 3 years out of 84 year record for each of them it is minus 1 day. So, what we are saying is that instead of the monsoon first having an onset over Kerala and moving north in 3 years what has happened is the onset occurred first over Mumbai and almost simultaneously within 1 day after that it occurred over Kerala as well. But in general there is considerable variation of the time from when the monsoon onset occurs over Kerala to that over Mumbai. Now, Joseph has done an interesting study in which he shows that the correlation between the travel time of monsoon from Kerala to Mumbai which means onset date of over Mumbai minus onset date over Kerala what is the number of days. The travel time of the monsoon between Kerala to Mumbai and the date of monsoon onset over Kerala is minus 0.63 which is very large and highly significant. So, what it is saying is that later the monsoon onset occurs over Kerala the shorter the time it takes to further onset to occur in Mumbai after that. So, this is very interesting there is a negative correlation between the travel time of the monsoon from Kerala to Mumbai to the date of monsoon onset over Kerala and Joseph actually fitted a linear regression curve to this relationship and he found the following that when the monsoon sets in on 10th May in Kerala which is very early the estimated onset dates at Mumbai are 22. So, it takes more than the average period of 8 days it takes 12 days. However, when the monsoon onset occurs on 30th May then it takes only 10 days so less than half of the time to for the onset to occur in Mumbai and on a occasion when it occurred in 19th June I believe this was in 1979 actually the monsoon onset over Kerala occurred 2 days later which is on 21st June. So, this is the way it happens and it was intriguing at first as to how this should happen. So, Joseph has suggested the following explanation he says that in the North Indian Ocean around India the axis of the climatological monthly mean assistive maximum lies close to the latitude of Kerala in May, but shift to the latitude of Mumbai in June. So, there is a shift in the axis of maximum SST from about Kerala which is 8 degrees to Mumbai which is about 19 degrees North and so what happens is you have a shift in the SST from May to June SST axis of maximum SST. So, in a year when MOK is late and he does not say why it is, but he says in years when monsoon onset over Kerala is very much delayed say by mid June then the monsoon cloud band after its formation and bringing rains to Kerala quickly adjusts to the June position of the SST maximum axis which is close to Mumbai. So, what happens is since the TCC the tropical convergence zone is favored to form over the region of maximum SST when it is formed to the south of it it quickly goes to the place where the maximum SST is and that is why the travel time is much shorter when the onset occurs in the towards the middle of June. This is the explanation given to by Joseph of course, one has to test this with models which has not been done. Now, so far we have talked of the onset over Kerala over Peninsula and how it occurs under northward with by means of northward movement of cloud bands or rain belts. Now, over the monsoon zone the onset first occurs over the eastern part. Let us take here the example of June south west monsoon of 2007 and what you find is the lines in green correspond to the actual dates on which the monsoon onset occurred in 2007 and what you will see here is that this is the 8th June line then this is 9th June line which you can see. So, on 9th June it has occurred over the eastern part first notice of course, that after striking after the onset over here which was somewhat early by 28th of May then the onset occurred at more and more northern latitudes. So, by 15th June we have onset here over the west coast of the Peninsula and it is only by 18th June that the onset occurred over Mumbai. So, here it is a clear case of northward propagation, but when you come to the monsoon zone which is this part of the region then what you see is on 8th of June you see it is here on 9th June it is here these are northern limits of the limit of the monsoon 10th of June it is here 13th of June it is here 15th of June it is here. So, you see a very clear movement from east to west over the monsoon zone and then after that it of course, continues to move here. So, this is there by 30th of June from 15th to 30th it has come here and then later on by 4th of July it has reached its destination. So, the very advance of the monsoon occurs is by northward movement up to this point somewhere around here and westward movement from here onwards. This is the way the advance of the monsoon takes place and you see that by this example here. Now, there is considerable variation from year to year in the advance process and we have seen this example before that in some years you know it takes a very long time for the answer to occur over the north western parts or for the culmination of the advance phase. An example I will show you is the south west monsoon of 2009 and you will see what happened in 2009 the onset occurred very fast here this is on 22nd May it has not yet occurred by 23rd 24th May onset has occurred over Kerala here and then it progressed quite well up to 7th June by 7th June it had reached the coast of Maharashtra west coast of Maharashtra. So, it has reached Konkan by 7th June now from here also we it had reached around here by 25th of May. But what happened after that is that between 25th May and 28th June there was no movement here at all you see. So, the monsoon was just static here and here also from 7th June to 28th June it remained here and 21st to 23rd it went there. So, what has happened is that there is a big hiatus is what they will refer to it later there is a within the advance there is a short spell and not very short in fact almost 2 weeks long from 7th to 24th in which no advance has occurred of the monsoon. So, such things also happen that there is a lot of inter annual variation and it is not as if there is a nice progression this way and progression this way to bring about the culmination of the advance phase. So, although the normal duration of the advance phase is about 38 days there is considerable variation in the duration of the advance phase from year to year with the duration being as long as 60 days or more in some year. Now this is the duration of the monsoon advance phase and this is the normal of 38 days you can see that there is considerable fluctuation in the duration of the advance phase and in 2002 which we will come to later. In fact, it took a very very long time more than 2 months from the monsoon onset on Kerala to actually achieve the onset over the north western parts of the country. So, in the monsoon of 2002 with an exceptionally long duration of the advance phase the monsoon advance stagnated or halted on 3 occasions 13 to 19 June 5th to 18 July and 20th July to 14 August. Such a stagnation is called a hiatus in the progression of the monsoon. So, such a hiatus occurred very often 13 to 19 June 5th to 18 July and 20th July to 14 August. So, 2002 was full of inactive spells in which the onset phase did not progress at all. So, these are called hiatus in the monsoon. Now there has been lot of studies of hiatus in the monsoon as well because during 1960 to 93 prolonged stagnation of 2 weeks or more was observed in 12 years with stagnation of the advance of both Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal branches in the years 76, 82 and 91. The variation in the number of days of stagnation or hiatus during the advance phase of the monsoon is plotted here and this is of course, 2002 which had a huge number and you have to remember here that this is not one hiatus, but it is some of all the all such spells in which the monsoon did not progress in the advance phase over that year. So, as you know in monsoon 2002 there were 3 such periods and combined they give this kind of a long more than 40 days of hiatus during the onset phase, but you see that even in other years there is a lot of variation. There are cases in which there is hardly any stagnation that occurred at all like this year of 63 and so on and so forth. Again here 96 there was hardly any stagnation, but typically you do have about 10 days of stagnation almost all the time and that is why the mean is of the order of 20 days or so. So, you know it is not as if advance of the monsoon is a steady progression from south to north and from east to west rather it occurs in burst of spells and in between these spells there are times when it does not seem to progress and those are the hiatuses and having a hiatus of some length is typical of the monsoon season. Now, why does this hiatus occur? It has been suggested the hiatus in the monsoon advance is linked with the abnormal circulation features with the penetration of the sub tropical ridge, the westerly trough activity in the mid latitude levels extended to southern latitude disrupting the monsoon flow when the synoptic forcing over north India is absent. As I mentioned before in winter we have only mid latitude flow over the region, but what happens is and we have also seen that soon after the onset of the monsoon the sub tropical ridge gets established, but if the sub tropical ridge comes to the south then you have a problem because then you have mid latitude influence in the monsoon and this is supposed to be one factor that lead to these hiatus events that we have observed. Another thing people have noticed is that intense convection over the Indian ocean just south of the equator near 90 degrees and comparatively warmer SSD over the same area also had been noticed during some hiatus events. So, these studies of hiatus events also suddenly threw up this region as being unfavorable. This is the region of the east equatorial Indian ocean which we refer to as EEO eastern equatorial Indian ocean and which plays a big role in major events such as Indian ocean dipole event and we will discuss this at length later, but this region convection over this region is found to be associated with hiatus events according to some of the researchers. Now, in fact, enhanced convection over this eastern part of the equatorial Indian ocean is a characteristic of break monsoons which we will discuss in a later lecture within the summer monsoon season. So, after the summer monsoon is established towards the end of June in July and August we get dry spells which are called breaks in the monsoon. Now, it is found that this kind of convection over the same region is a characteristic of the breaks in the monsoon. So, it is very interesting it is also shown that such convection is unfavorable on the inter annual scale also. So, for the seasonal total also enhance convection over that region is unfavorable for the summer monsoon over the Indian region. So, it appears that this region eastern equatorial Indian ocean is convection over this region is an unfavorable factor for each phase of the monsoon that is to say for the advance of the monsoon for the fluctuations in the monsoon during the peak monsoon months of July and August as well as for the seasonal rainfall as a whole. So, this is a very interesting thing we will have to follow it up later on when we discuss the physics of the monsoon. Now, the advance of the summer monsoon over the Gangetic valley and north west India is associated with the establishment of an active TCG across India that is the CTCG over the monsoon zone and we have seen this before and building up of a strong subtropical ridge to the north of 25 degrees north in the middle troposphere. So, once you have an active continental tropical convergence zone over the monsoon zone naturally overlying this low pressure region with intense convection will be a high pressure region and this is the subtropical ridge that they talk about. So, once the convection gets established once the CTCG gets established we have a very strong subtropical ridge to the north of 25 degrees north. It is believed that the warming up of the Tibetan plateau is one of the causes for the establishment of the subtropical ridge throughout the middle and upper troposphere. It is been suggested that the hiatus in the monsoon advance is linked to abnormal circulation features such as southward extension of the westerly trough activity which occur when the synoptic scale forcing over north India is absent. So, what we are saying is you know before the monsoon in winter months we have in fact mid latitude circulation over the northern part of India. With the monsoon during the peak summer monsoon season this has been this is totally pushed to the north of Tibet to the northern region, but what they are saying is when there is very little synoptic scale forcing over the monsoon region that is to say when there is very little convection associated with the tropical system often what happens is even after the onset of the monsoon these mid latitude systems tend to penetrate. And they it is suggested that in such situations the effect of the mechanical barrier of the Himalayan massive and elevated Tibetan plateau on mid tropospheric westerly troughs also becomes important in adversely affecting the advance of the monsoon. So, what they are saying is that one goes back partly to the winter like situation and because of that Tibetan plateau would act like a mechanical barrier as we have seen it does in winter and the fact that it is an elevated heat source also leads to an also has an important impact in adversely affecting the monsoon. So, it is suggest all the studies of Hayata suggest that the presence of the mid tropospheric subtropical ridge its location and the mid latitude westerly troughs during the onset phase of the monsoon appear to be important in determining the advance of the monsoon. So, we know that the advance of the monsoon comprises cloud bands moving from south to north cloud bands generated over the equatorial Indian ocean moving northward often in association with cloud systems over the Arabian sea and Bay of Bengal. And in addition to that we have westward movement of system generated over the Bay of Bengal across the monsoon zone. So, the advance process in fact comprises genesis of clouds and cloud systems over the surrounding seas and equatorial Indian ocean and their propagation on to the region northward propagation of cloud bands and westward propagation of synoptic scale disturbances from the Bay of Bengal. So, clearly genesis of these cloud systems and their propagation play a very critical role in the advance phase of the monsoon. But now we have seen that from studies of the Hayatas it appears that not only is it important to look at these genesis and propagation of cloud systems it is also important to consider the look at the establishment of a strong mid tropospheric subtropical ridge and adjoining Tibetan plateau because they also play an important role in the advance of the monsoon. Now, there has been a study an interesting study by Nithyanand Singh and others on the onset of the monsoon over the monsoon zone. Date of the onset of the monsoon over the monsoon zone has been derived as the date on which the cumulative rainfall over the zone exceeds 50 millimeters. So, he has used a threshold as in one day when the cumulative rainfall exceeds 50 millimeters he calls it the onset over the monsoon zone as a whole and he has derived these dates of the monsoon and remember that if one talks of onset on the monsoon zone as a whole this means this is the culmination of the advance phase of the monsoon right this is the culmination of the transition from spring to summer monsoon. And so when now we should look at the composites that he has derived of various important facets relative to the advance relative to the onset date of the monsoon zone and the features he has looked at is meridional winds over the Arabian sea low level jet of East Africa remember these were important circulation features of the monsoon. Tibetan anti cyclone which is the high which gets established over the low over the Indian monsoon region all of these undergo a rapid transition around the onset date of the monsoon zone and peak seasonal values are attained soon thereafter. Now, this is very interesting to see what you see here A is the rainfall over the core monsoon zone and you can see that this is the composite now for all the years and this is the onset date. So, what you see here is this is when his cumulative rainfall has exceeded 5. So, this is the onset date, but you can see it has not only exceeded 5 in the composite it almost hits 10 centimeters. So, the composite actually means a very sharp increase from a few days before the onset about 10 days before the onset it is less than 1 millimeter cumulative rainfall and within this short time it attain something like 10 millimeters. So, it is the rainfall becomes 1 centimeter here and so, this is the rainfall then this is the precipitable water which also shows an increase this is the weafened field over the Arabian sea and this is the geopotential height. So, this is the 200 HPA level of the Tibetan plateau. So, what you see is basically that if you look at the monsoon zone itself this onset date of the monsoon zone is a very important date because before that one talks of the spring kind of a situation and after that is the establishment of the summer monsoon with all the characteristic features of the cross equatorial flow being established over the Arabian sea and of this being a precipitable water becoming high of course, along with rainfall and the Tibetan high also being established at 200 HPA. So, onset of the monsoon over the monsoon zone is the therefore, marks the culmination of the advance phase of the monsoon. Now, we have seen earlier that there is hardly any relationship between the total summer monsoon rainfall over India and the onset of the monsoon over Kerala. Earlier onset does not mean more rain or later onset does not mean less rain as one would have thought if in fact, it was a matter of stretching the season, but that did not happen. So, the onset did not have much of a relationship. However, there is some relationship of the duration of the advance phase with ISMR. This is the all India monsoon rainfall here on the y-axis and the number of days in the advance phase here and what you see is that if the advance is very rapid that is this part, this is the average period taken for advance. So, if it is faster than normal, then the chance of getting high rainfall is much higher than getting deficit. So, above normal rainfall the probability of above normal rainfall is rather high. If you have a very rapid advance say in 30 days or so instead of 38 days then most of the points are above normal and very few points are below normal. But if in fact, the advance takes normal or above normal then there is much less you can talk about whether you will get above normal or below normal rainfall. So, the relationship is there the correlation is not bad it is minus 0.34, but it is useful only partially one can say that if the advance is very fast then one is more or less guaranteed that the rainfall will not be below normal the chance of a below normal rainfall is very small. But once it is beyond this then there is too much of a scatter to make too much sense of it and notice that even when the advance took as long as 80 days you still had normal rainfall. So, the relationship for advance relationship with the duration of advance when the duration of advance is close to the average or above it is very poor with ISMR. So, the Indian summer monsoon rainfall does depend on how long the monsoon took to reach its destination in northwest India after starting from Kerala. Note that when the advance is faster than the average the probability of above normal ISMR is very high. However, when it is slower than average the chance of ISMR being below the average is only somewhat more than that of ISMR being above the average. So, with this now I come to the end of that transition discussion of the transition from spring to summer and if you look in the literature you find that most of the studies address the question of monsoon onset over Kerala which is the first time it makes it up its appearance over the Indian region. So, although the understanding and prediction of the entire onset phase is important this onset phase which commences with monsoon onset over Kerala and culminates with the establishment of the CTC over the monsoon zone is important for short range rainfall variability as well as the seasonal rainfall. The focus of most of the studies so far has been on the monsoon onset over Kerala. So, this is a lacuna that one should now try and address and it is very important to understand the variability of the advance phase and in fact if one is worried about all India rainfall it is more important to understand why the advance occurs faster in some years than in others if we want to say something about the all India summer monsoon rainfall. Now, I come to the retreat of the monsoon now I must mention that the retreat of the monsoon is also called the withdrawal of the monsoon both words mean the same thing. The normal dates of the retreat of the monsoon rains over different part of the country are derived as are given here and let me just tell you how they are derived. The norm again like onset the normal dates of the retreat of the monsoon rains over different parts of India is given by India met department are based on the long term average pentad rainfall graphs at for several observatory stations. So, what they do is to have mean 5 day rainfall graphs and the middle date of the pentad which shows an abrupt decrease in rainfall is taken as the date of retreat of the monsoon for each station and middle date of the one that shows an abrupt increase in rainfall is taken as the onset. So, this is how IMD calculates the onset remember this is all based on the mean rainfall patterns. So, the retreat of the monsoon is here it commences around 1st September from the northern northwestern parts and keeps retreating and finally, phase of the over the southern south peninsula is completed by December. So, now we have these are the mean dates of retreat you can see that by end of September this is 1st of October. So, by end of September it has retreated from a very large part of the monsoon zone and by 15th of October it has retreated from about north of 15 north or so. So, totally from this part Gangetic plain monsoon zone and it has come well to the south and then it keeps on the rainy season continues towards this end with the final retreat of the monsoon rains only occurring in December from the Indian region. So, the climatological retreat of the monsoon from northwest India begins in the 1st fortnight of September its timing has considerable inter annual variability. The retreat of withdrawal of the monsoon and its gradual equator word movement and the deceleration of the low level westerly flow is heralded by the seasonal cooling of the Asian continent. See by after October in November December this part begins to start cooling. So, with the this is accompanied by the retreat of the monsoon. The withdrawal of the summer monsoon has been associated with the southward displacement of surface pressure trough, the establishment of dry continental air and development of anti cyclonic flow over central India. So, now they are talking of withdrawal of the summer monsoon and not the entire monsoon. Remember what IMD has drawn is if you like the withdrawal of the rain giving system and that takes a long time that takes till December, but we had divided into rainy season. So, summer monsoon withdrawal corresponds to that occurs over this region by about early October and so, when one talks of central India we you know the surface low pressure trough will move southward from there and you get an establishment of dry continental air and instead of having cyclonic flow you get anti cyclonic flow over the central part of India. At the time of onset and advance of the monsoon the rain belt associated with the tropical conversion zone moves north, but monsoon withdrawal is associated with the inability of the TCG and its associated rain ban to advance to higher latitudes. We have seen this before. At the time of onset each successive northward moving ban moves further and further northward. At the time of retreat or withdrawal it is not as if things start moving southward not at all the genesis is still around the equatorial region. It is just that the culmination occurs more and more southward or the ban cannot move as far north as it used to before. So, the culmination of the propagations becomes occurs at a much more southerly latitude during the retreat. So, this is an interesting feature again which we had pointed out earlier that the before the satellite era people used to think that just like you have a northward movement of the rain belt you would have a southward movement of the rain belt during the retreat of the monsoon. But actually if you look at cloud bands it is northward movement which culminates at a lower and lower latitude as with successive northward propagation. Now, we have seen that the basic system responsible for the monsoon rainfall is the TCG which is the same as that which is responsible for the large scale rainfall over other tropical regions such as the Pacific. And we have also seen that it is the same system that gives us rain irrespective of whether we are in the south west monsoon or in the northeast monsoon the so called south west or northeast or the summer monsoon or post monsoon. Now, the dates of retreat or withdrawal of the monsoon determined from the rainfall at different stations actually which is the this is again from IMD we have looked at these onset and withdrawal. So, this corresponds actually to the onset and retreat of the TCG from the Indian region. So, we have dates of retreat or withdrawal of the monsoon determined from the rainfall of the different stations correspond to retreat of the TCG. So, the TCG retreats from this region which means the TCG which gets generated to the south no longer reaches these higher latitudes but actually reaches only up to here and then only up to here and so on and so forth. So, the retreat corresponds to retreat of the tropical conversion zone from our midst. At any place the period between the onset and the retreat of the monsoon can be considered as the rainy season and the mean rainy season can be derived from the dates given by IMD for the onset and retreat. So, given that we have a onset of the monsoon and retreat here one can actually derive what is the mean rainy season over any part. However, the rainy season over the Indian region is divided into summer monsoon and post monsoon season and as we mentioned in the first summer monsoon most of the flow is from the southwest most of the winds are from the southwest. So, it is also called the southwest monsoon. So, the onset of the monsoon over Kerala corresponds to the onset of the summer monsoon as well as the onset of the monsoon as a whole because that is the first season and during the onset phase the TCG gets established over the monsoon zone north of about 15 north. The summer monsoon is characterized by winds from the southwest at the surface and has been traditionally and even now called the southwest monsoon. For some reason which is not clear to me at present IMD declares the withdrawal of the summer monsoon or the southwest monsoon for the country. So, while the mean dates of IMD for withdrawal of the monsoon correspond to the end of the rainy season for the as a whole for that part of the country IMD also declares the end of the summer monsoon which is part of the rainy season. And it is not clear to me whether that is a useful thing to do or not. But let me talk about what is actually done. So, the retreat of the summer or southwest monsoon corresponds to the disappearance of the TCG from the monsoon zone and hence the disappearance of southwestern is from north and central India. So, India meteorological department at present uses the following guidelines for declaring withdrawal of the southwest monsoon. So, withdrawal from extreme northwestern parts of the country should not be before 1st of September. So, this is an instruction to for operational declaration of withdrawal of the southwest monsoon. So, they say even if you feel that the conditions look like the monsoon has withdrawn you should not do it before 1st of September. After 1st September for the first withdrawal from the western parts of northwest India there are many criteria they look at cessation of rainfall activity, establishment of anti-cyclone over the in the lower troposphere this is over the monsoon zone. And considerable reduction in moisture content as inferred from satellite data. Now, for further withdrawal of the country they say may be declared keeping the spatial continuity reduction in moisture seen in water vapor imagery and prevalence of dry weather for 5 days. And this is southwest monsoon should be withdrawn from the south southern peninsula and hence from the entire country only after 1st October when the circulation pattern indicates a change over from southwestern event. So, only when the winds become northeasterly should you declare this. Now, I must mention here that this is a very interesting terminology that IMD uses they say they feel that they are the players who actually bring on the monsoon or withdraw it which is an amusing thing. So, they say southwest monsoon should be withdrawn what they mean is of course, it could be declared that the southwest monsoon has withdrawn. But it is a very amusing way of putting things, but which IMD uses has been using for decades. Now, since people were interested in summer monsoon some work has been done on how does one define you know the duration of the summer monsoon. And there are two Japanese who have defined an index for monsoon withdrawal based on the characteristic low level circulation associated with the summer monsoon. And this is a daily circulation index which is defined as the difference in average 850 HPA zonal winds between a southern box and a northern box. Southern box centered around 10 north and a northern box centered from 20 to 30. So, what this is capturing is we have seen earlier that during the southwest monsoon there is shear between the west always to the south and east always to the north. And what this index is capturing is the shear vorticity above the boundary layer. And we have to note that during active phases of the monsoon this shear vorticity is cyclonic. For the mean monsoon as well this shear vorticity is cyclonic. And remember that vorticity is closely linked to organized rainfall. So, if one has to use a circulation index it makes sense to use 850 millibar vorticity as the index and that is what they do. And what they say is that the date of monsoon withdrawal is taken as the first of 7 consecutive days for which the smooth DCI is negative. So, this vorticity has to change from cyclonic to anti cyclonic with the withdrawal of the summer monsoon. And so they look at the vorticity from about 10 to 20 north 20 to 30, 5 to 15 we surveyed 20 to 30. So, over that band they are looking at the shear vorticity which is the dominant component of vorticity. And they look at the data to determine when it becomes negative and it should not be just a day or two of fluctuation of vorticity, but it should be a permanent transition to a withdrawal state. And so they wait for 7 days and only the first of 7 consecutive days for which the smooth DCI is negative is taken as the withdrawal date. And the withdrawal dates that they derived are shown here and you can see the withdrawal of the south west monsoon or the summer monsoon dates are here. And the latest is sometime in November, but the mean date is about 20th October. So, 20th October is the date of the withdrawal of the south west monsoon from the country by this definition. Now I will start a discussion on the rainy season over the Asian monsoon region and variation of rainfall profiles. Remember here we have been talking of mean rainfall. And we have also said that the patterns of mean rainfall vary across the country from places like Chennai or on southeast peninsula where maximum rain occurs in October, November to places over the Indian monsoon zone like Chai Bazaar and so on, where the maximum occurs only in July, August and the rain is restricted to June to September. So, we have already seen that there is a great deal of variation in the patterns. Now there have been some studies of monsoon rainy season defining what a monsoon rainy season is and looking at its variation over the Asian region as a whole and circulation. There have also been studies of determining regions over which the rainfall variation patterns are similar. The monthly mean rainfall profiles are similar. I will talk about both of those in the next set of lectures. Thank you.


Well, if you don't see a welcome already, welcome to the White House. There's a story we had in Hollywood about Cecil B. DeMille, the producer of all of those great historical spectacles. It was after the big earthquake in March 1933. And a famous actress of that time, Janet Gaynor, had been in one of the studio buildings when the quake began and all the shaking took place. And when it was over and the ground had stopped moving, she turned to a friend and said, I thought for a moment we dropped into one of those DeMille pictures. That's just how I felt last week during the Moscow summit. Dropped into a grand historical moment. I know that you have questions to ask about the summit. And I don't want to take too much time at the start, but I thought I'd quickly review what we set out to do and what we did. As you know, our relationship with the Soviets is like a table. It's built on four legs, arms reduction, resolving of regional conflicts, improvement of human rights within the Soviet Union, and expansion of bilateral exchanges. The Soviets have indicated many times that they'd prefer that discussions be confined to the arms issues alone. But we believe that sustained improvement in relations can't rest stably on one leg. We saw what happened in the detente period of the early 70s. There were arms and trade agreements and what was built as a general foe. But because of Soviet behavior in so many areas, these could not be sustained. Weapons are a sign of tensions, not a cause of them. I know all of you've heard me say this time and again, but let me repeat it here. Nations do not distrust each other because they're armed. They are armed because they distrust each other. And we began building our new relationship with the Soviets seven and a half years ago. Strengthening America's defenses was and is part of it. Our zero option proposal for intermediate range nuclear missiles was part of it, coupled with NATO's deployment of Pershing II and ground launched cruise missiles. It was a carrot and stick response to the highly destabilizing deployment of the Soviet INF missiles. Our policies regarding emigration from the Soviet Union, human rights problems, and the Soviet presence in a variety of third world conflicts were also aspects of it. Progress was stalled for a long time. The Soviets tested our resolve and that of our allies at the bargaining table and in the deployment of INF weapons. They also went through a series of leaders, none of whom lived long enough to change the longstanding Brezhnev era policies. That was one of my problems, my delay in getting started in dealings with the Soviet Union. They kept dying on me. And now under Mr. Gorbachev, the Soviets have a leader who appears to want to change things and who may actually be able to change things internally as promotion of Perestroika and Glasnost gives us hope. Although we remember that old American political adage, trust everybody, but cut the cards. In foreign affairs, he's begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan and agreed to our zero option for INF, something the Soviets spent a number of years denouncing. I hope you'll forgive me for saying this, but too often in the past it's appeared to me that coverage of summits has been geared more to the hunt for headlines than to the realities of business. If there wasn't the blockbuster agreement, a summit was dismissed. In fact, each of my four meetings with Mr. Gorbachev has produced significant steps forward. Take just one area, reduction in the level of strategic arms. In Geneva, the general secretary and I agreed on the concept of 50% reductions. And in Reykjavik, on numerical limits for warheads and delivery vehicles. In Washington, on intensive work to complete a START treaty, including comprehensive verification provisions building on those in the INF treaty. And in Moscow, we moved forward in reaching an agreement on an experiment to improve the verification of existing nuclear testing treaties, and another agreement on notification of strategic ballistic missile launches. I've heard repeated many times the old rule that you should never go to a summit unless everything has been fully scripted in advance. But as you might have guessed, I don't fully accept that. I can't tell you the shock I heard in the first time when they said that we should put out the statement in advance that we were going to finish the summit with. I believe that if relations between the United States and the Soviet Union are genuinely to improve from time to time, the top leaders must step in and exercise leadership. They must agree on a common set of broad goals so that those under them have a clear and common green light to move forward. That's been the purpose and the accomplishment of these four summits. Today, we can say with caution that we may be entering a new era of US and Soviet relations. It's been a long time coming. But unlike past improvements that saw only a brief day, I think this one will have a broad and stable footing. If the Soviets want it to grow, it can and it will. And now, rather than going on, I know that you have questions that you want to ask and that I want to answer. I think of what a refreshing change this will be for me to hear someone shout a question and realize it's not Sam Donaldson. I come to close, Sam, I'm afraid, in background at least. I'd like to ask you with the administration coming to a close and in your own mind and the mind of many others so much accomplished at the summit, how are you going to prepare for the transition, whether it's Republican or Democratic administration, so that you can continue what you've started? And I have a follow-up I'd like to ask. Well, I'll be pretty handicapped if it goes one way, but if it goes the way I'd like it to go. George Bush, who's been a part of everything that we've accomplished in these several years, why I would want to point out to my successor the things that we didn't get accomplished that are still needed, the improvement in the whole budgeting process, the line item veto and what it means. As a governor for eight years, I did 943 line item vetoes without ever being overridden once, and we left the state with a surplus, not a deficit. But no, I don't want to be of help if I can, but there are a number of things that in these succeeding months we're still going to try to get forward. My follow-up is nothing is going to be accomplished in terms of an arms agreement without your support. Even after you're out of office, do you think there should be some kind of formalized relationship between yourself and the next president and next administration so that you could be privy to what's being prepared along the way? Well, let me say there is such a situation or arrangement now. Regularly, we keep each of the former presidents informed in writing with the policies and where we are and things like the summit and all of that, that goes on regularly and they're all kept completely informed. And I think that's all that a president, ex-president, should ask for. President Paul Inman from KATC in Portland, Oregon. Acknowledging that you are pleased with the progress made in Moscow and that your administration stated there is a possibility of agreement before your term ends, will you press from that if it becomes realistic to include going so far as to invoking your powers to recall Congress for ratification? Oh, I wouldn't mind recalling them for anything. No, the thing is, let me make clear that we have refrained from setting deadlines. I think the idea to set down some line and then you find yourself tempted to agree to something less good than it could be but because of the deadline. So if it isn't, I think it'd be great if the start agreement could be finished, the negotiations go on between our representatives. If that could be done before I left office and it could be signed, that'd be fine because then we could move on to some other things that need dealing with conventional weapons and so forth. But if it isn't, why we'll just keep on negotiating and then try to impress on whoever comes in next to where we are. I've got to come over to this side here. Sometime. My name is Ted Shrewach. I'm from WCTP in Tallahassee, Florida. We both went to Dixon High School in Dixon, Illinois. Anyway, sir, what I was going to ask you about was the Democratic side on the presidential politics. How do you see the Reverend Jackson's campaign? Do you think that he is a viable Vice Presidential candidate? Can you give us some advice and follow-up? Well, I hate to give any suggestions that might be of help to the other side but there's no question that he has impressed a great number of followers. And I want to say and without any inference to any racial difference or anything, I would have to say that I find myself in great disagreement with policies that he has proposed as well as those of the other candidate, Dukakis. But I think that goes with the game. That they obviously have different goals in mind than we have. But I think he's certainly been a viable candidate all the way. Can you bring some problems in California? What can you do to help in that? Everything I can. I've had to be neutral for a long time until there was a definite candidate because in this job, you're a titular head of the party, so you have to remain neutral. But as I say, he's been a part of everything that we've accomplished in this administration and lady. What is your impression of Sharon Crockett from LAC Radio Nashville? What is your impression of the people in the Soviet Union? Just the regular people. My opinion of the, in the Soviet Union, there are several people at my table here that are going to have to listen again. One of the most exciting things, I couldn't believe it, after all the years of propaganda that we're all villains on this side of the ocean and everything, the Soviet people were the warmest, friendliest, nicest people you could ever meet. Every place we went, whether night or day, the streets would be lined with thousands of them as if there was going to be a parade and their friendly waves and then in the opportunities when we did have a chance to get out on the street and come in contact with them and they all wanted to shake hands and visit. They were really wonderful. And I'm going to add something in there that you didn't ask, but that I had said once before up here.  They're just wonderful. Mr. President? Mr. President? Well, then I'll get back over there. Mr. President, my name is Cameron Harper. I'm from KTVK Television in Phoenix. And I've heard you say in speeches that the summit was a turning point in East West Affairs and you said that it planted the seeds of freedom and liberty. Vice President George Bush, as recently as yesterday, was saying that he's not so sure, that he's not sure it represents a fundamental change in direction to the Soviet Union and its relations with this country. Is he reading a different set of briefing papers, perhaps? No, and I think he's being as careful as we almost be. It's all right to be optimistic and all of that, but I'm not a linguist, but I learned a Russian proverb and Gorbachev wishes to hell I hadn't. It is Dovayai, no provyai. It means trust, but verify. And we have the greatest verification worked out in the INF Treaty that's ever taken place. There will be, I think, 60-some Americans permanently stationed in the Soviet Union and they will have as many of theirs permanently stationed here. And that's never been attempted in any treaties before. As a young lady there, here. Mr. President, you know Mikhail Gorbachev probably better than any American had four summits with him, spent many hours one-on-one with him. If he has the good fortune to have your good health and stamina, he could conceivably be the Secretary General for 20, 25 years. I'd like, first, your impressions of the man and any advice you might offer to the next president on going toe-to-toe with Mikhail Gorbachev. Well, I have known a number of their leaders and met with a number of their leaders before. And I must say, this, he is different. And this doesn't mean, I mean that's to lower your guard precipitately at all, but he definitely, his Perestroika, and I read his book, and Glasnost, he definitely wants changes in the social structure there. And he's faced with a great economic problem, literally a basket case. And he has plans, and these plans or the things, these other things I've just mentioned are part of his plan for trying to build up the economy and make it more viable than it presently is. And I have to say that I think the Russian people have taken to both of these Glasnost and Perestroika and have a far better feeling about their system. I didn't run into the kind of cynicism that I've seen so often in the past among them. And I think that Margaret Thatcher was right when she said, he's someone you can do business with. I work all over in the Annapolis, Indiana. In light of the heavy coverage of the summit, I'm curious why you invited us out here today. Are we going to do the summit? Oh, I've got the coverage. No, let me tell you that we've gone too long without people like you being here. I started in the beginning having several times a year people like yourselves from all over the country here in this same room and doing what we're doing right now because I recognize that you're only sources of information were coming from certain elements of the press within the Beltway and in the East here. And I sometimes have found some of those sources biased. And I thought that you had a right to be able to ask and you ask good questions too. If it's young lady here, then I'll get you. This is the plan of the question that was asked to you earlier. I'm Nancy Chandler from WITI TV in Milwaukee. I'm wondering, with the approaching election, you're knowing Gorbachev, if you had talked at all, certainly we know your preference in the presidential race. If he had expressed one way or another, which candidate he might appreciate negotiating with in the future? No, I think he's been very careful to not ever get into that subject. And he's never brought that up or not. But I've made it plain to him that I'm going to do everything I can to impress upon my successor where we are and what the goal should continue to be. Now that young man I... President, some remarks you made in Moscow caused great consternation among Indian leaders. One of the kinder assessments was by Navajo tribal chairman Peter McDonald, who happens to be a Republican and suggested it might behoove you to visit the Navajo Reservation this fall. I'm wondering whether you have any regrets about the remarks you made about American Indians in Moscow and what the chances are of you visiting the Navajo Reservation this fall. Well, I don't know whether I can... Whether it's scheduled to permit. I'm still trying to find the fellow that tells me what I'm going to be doing every 15 minutes every day. But no, I don't regret that. And I do think that there were mistakes made back in the very beginning of our country with regard to the Indians and the manner of handling them. But the question that I was answering was in effect, was that somehow I had refused to meet with them. I've never refused to meet with any Americans and certainly haven't refused to meet with them and have on a number of occasions. And I don't know just what the specific complaint is. But I know that we've been doing for a long time, our utmost to provide education for those who wanted to maintain Indian life as it was on the reservation in contrast to those who leave and come out and join the rest of us and become more like us. I gotta turn back this way again. May I go back here once and then I'll come to you. Sir Reagan, Steve Ronnan, Arnold WESH Television, Orlando. Thank you for having us for lunch. Enjoy the finger bowls. I can ask you, sir, our area covers the Kennedy Space Center. We follow space very closely and paid a lot of attention to Mr. Gorbachev's first motions about a joint commission to Mars. Didn't you weigh that prospect at all? Do you see that happening? And how do you view our space program as opposed to where there is? They just put three cosmonauts up yesterday. Yes, there's no question but that the challenge of tragedy has put us behind. And we are back of where our schedule called for but because we wanted to be underway on a space station by this time. With regard to the Mars trip, incidentally we've already sent a craft to Mars as you know in the past, taken some pictures that make you wonder why anyone would wanna go there. But they've specified theirs would be unmanned also. I have turned that over to our people in that field because I don't know just exactly what the scheduling problems are for getting us back into operation again and whether that would set us back but I'm going to wait for their reporting before making a decision on whether we do something shortly. Space station, I know you wanted to have ours out there by 1990 originally. Yeah. Do you have a money battle to make that happen? We'll come real quick. Well, as I say, we were set back by that tragedy and then the extensive research and all that went on so that we wouldn't have a repeat. And so we're behind, there's no question, we're behind schedule in all of our space activity other than the things that we put aloft such as the satellites that can give us the weather and that can photograph the earth as if they were just on the second floor and so forth, that type of thing. But generally we are behind schedule and right now I understand we're having a little problem since the explosion in one of our rocket fuel plants we're having trouble. Mr. President, Bill Byer from Miami, you're coming to Miami later this month, I understand, but some of the Cuban American community and many of the people down there say that the Reagan administration has betrayed us, you've heard us. What's your answer to this? Of course, betrayal is a very provocative word but nonetheless it's bounced around the headlines all over the country. What would you answer them? And then I have to follow. I would answer that they're misinformed. We certainly haven't betrayed them nor is there anything to this idea that we've softened up our relationship with Castro. As you know, we were instrumental and in fact I would think that we were the ones that got the United Nations to authorize a team to go to Castro or to Cuba and look into the charges of violation of human rights there. So, no, we're not doing anything of that kind. I am, since Cardinal O'Connor went down there, if it is true that he is going to release several hundred of their political prisoners, I have firsthand knowledge of what those prisoners have been going through and some of them for more than 20 years and the torture that they've gone through. But before I would take Castro's word as to the number and that he's releasing the bulk of them, only a few, no, I'd want somebody else to be there counting. The subject of the backyard, the Caribbean and South America come up during the Moscow Summit at all, that cancer of communism seeping through. We always bring that up in connection with that one thing about regional activities and regional developments. You don't get definite specific yes and no answers to things. We think that there is a big improvement, the Afghanistan thing that has happened. We think that there is a probability, maybe I should say possibility, but I believe even a probability of now relief in Angola from the same kind of a situation, but yes, they know our feelings and we have laid out the places where we believe that something must be done. We have time for one more question. Ray Bream of ABC Talk Radio Los Angeles. And first of all, as a member of the Rotary Club of Pacific Palisades, we know you're an honorary member and after January, we invite you back. Thank you. Regarding SDI, a few months ago, you said that the Soviets may be preparing to break out of the ABM treaty and deploy a nationwide ABM system. Did you talk that over with Mr. Gorbachev and what was his answer? Well, we've told him that we believe that they're in violation. We know they're in violation of the ABM treaty, particularly with Krasniarsk. And we've made it plain that we know that and that that is going to be factored in in any of our dealings, and particularly with SDI. We know that they have been spending far more on defensive programs than we have with SDI. But evidently, their technology must not have kept pace with ours because our system is one that I think, in spite of some of the pessimists who claim otherwise, that it is a research program aimed at a target. And the research has, there have been a number of breakthroughs that has made most of our scientists optimistic that it is a system that can work. And if it can, I have often said, and have said to General Secretary Gorbachev that this could be the answer to the dreams, the dream of no more nuclear weapons if we could make them obsolete with this kind of defensive system. And I have said that I would be pleased to share it with the world if we had such a thing because someday, you know, we know how to make those nuclear missiles. And someday there could be a madman come along, another Hitler or something, and try to blackmail the earth, but not if we all had a protective system against them that was almost invulnerable. And we're very optimistic about it. Did you mean that one, or that there was one that I was good to take right back there with his hand up? If I could play what if, a game of what if with you. If I were Vice President, if I were George Bush and we were in the Oval Office and they were just you and I, and I said, gee, Mr. President, all the polls show that I'm behind my caucus. What would you give them, perhaps, to buy some strategy to reverse that? I'd say, George, we'll you and I get out there in the trail and start pinning him down on the things he claims, which we know are not true. And then we would say such things as some of our own accomplishments. You know, if I listened to him long enough, I would be convinced that we're in an economic downturn and that people are homeless and people are going without food and medical attention and that we've got to do something about the unemployed. Do you know what the potential pool of employment is in the United States? I didn't until I got here.  That is the potential employment pool. All of those students, all of those retired people, everything. Today, the highest percentage of that pool is employed than ever in our history. There were other things we wanted to do. We wanted to get the government to act a little bit more like business and do things more effectively and efficiently than can. I put George Bush in charge of a task force to see how many federal regulations could be eliminated. The book containing those regulations now is only half as big as it was when we came. And our estimate is that the people, the communities, the states, and businesses have now been able to reduce the amount of time spent on government-required paperwork by 600 million man-hours a year. And there are other little items like just the other day some figures came in that it used to take 43 days to get a passport. It only takes 10 now. There's one that used to take 100 days to get an urban renewal loan set in motion and it doesn't take 100 days anymore. It takes about 16. I may be getting some of these figures inaccurate, but that's how much the improvement has come in business-like ways and things that we've done to imitate business instead of attack business. Now I know that I'm way past my schedule and Elizabeth, she could have hit me over the head if I don't say it, there's one thing that's typical of this as well as the regular press conferences and that is that darn it, I always have to walk away with about 30 hands that have been waving that I haven't been able to get to. I just try to point in directions here and not play any favorites since you're all new to me. I couldn't play any favorites, but I'm grateful for your being here and maybe if you feel that right and some questions and handing them to our people, we can send you back some answers. We didn't get to them at all, but I have to get back to the office now. Thank you all very much. Thank you.


You there's no hard feelings. I want you to take the night off rock What's good Joshua boros back again with another video, so we're gonna check out WWE the Rocks most savage moments so apparently Viber incarnate show they Gave me a little bit of a shout-out on this video, so we're gonna see exactly where it is someone said yo You gotta check this video out. They shot at you out So I think they do know that I react to their videos like their compilations and stuff like that No, a lot of the rock moments I have already seen before but I just want to see where they actually put the shout out shout out in the video so if you haven't already subscribed to them if you're a fan of like the older wrestling clips and like promos and Compilations you go subscribe to Viber incarnate show. I've already subscribed to them. Go check them out and Let's see exactly where did they put The the shout out in the video. I want to see this. I'm excited. I Mean it's the rock. I can never not want to watch Whatever Benoit and The Rocks feud they had they had they had a pretty intense feud. I love their feud And now the rocks not talking about the winner of the match gets five minutes with your wife Quite frankly everybody's already had that Who is this Rudy Pooh?  Michael Cole if you take one more step to that computer the rock will get out here and Slap the taste so far out of your mouth.  I don't think it was Gucci I think it was more so like for the old school for Saatchi shirts, bro His drip He he was he had to drip the days bro. I always loved the way the rock came out He's like bro. He's just you knew he was too cool. You knew he he was the drip guy back then for sure He's with Linda is for the rock is concerned.  I want you to take the night off rock Wait before you leave before the rock leaves. Come here for a second It's just unmatched bro, just what we gotta watch this again before the rock leaves Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute now. I make pretty damn good movies. I'm not making the marine for price One of the most physically impressive specimens that wwf has ever seen and you say this Why are you back? recipe Scott man Are you on nitro?  This is so disrespectful bro.  No way.     What's up with that? It was always funny, bro.  Even the second time around it was entertaining like they They were really shooting at each other like this wasn't like there was some real backstage tension because You know at one point joncina has set on record. He didn't like the rock for like just how he left You know saying it wasn't really it's like he left wrestling and wwe to be a star Which is kind of what jon is doing now, but that's neither here nor there at the time That's how jon felt behind the scenes and the rock, you know had his his dislike for him as well But it worked. It was it was so good. I enjoyed their little promos. They had leading up to the rest of mania That's cool, man Appreciate you. Uh, uh, give me me a little shout out that. Hey, man I love the compilations. Keep doing your thing, bro. That's dope. That that's dope. That just that made my day That made my day. Hello ross. That's awesome. Uh, you came up with the name coach This coming from a man who took a sacred valour marriage to the biggest slut in the western hemisphere Yeah You don't boo the rock. Look at fatty the rockets were pie in a week. Then you get in a lifetime The biggest thing to hit canada cuts a maple leaf sock He was so good as a heel too a lot of people Like to say their best run of the rockers when he came back as hollywood rock You know kind of like the hollywood hogan, but he was he was like a Movie star he was arrogant and you know people were booing him because of that, but he played up to it and it worked Anybody knows anything about screwing is you I don't want to talk to you.      So they've been teasing it This is they gotta make this happen next year. WrestleMania in LA. It only makes sense They gotta make this happen, bro And they don't make it happen next year Then it's it's probably not gonna happen anytime soon because that would be the perfect time. They've been teasing it I just I just want I can't wait to see the promo segments. They're gonna be fantastic They're gonna be great and ultimately I think that will probably be the rocks last match wrestling Because he doesn't need to face anybody else. He's done it all If there's anything he needs to face roman reigns and he needs to obviously put over roman So but comment down below. Let me know if you guys enjoyed this video What's your favorite rock moment from this video?  I thought that was the layers, man But appreciate all the love and support road to adk. We're almost there. Appreciate y'all kicking into me. See y'all next peace