A 4.80 m long shallow water sediment core, collected from the inner shelf (at 22 m water depth) off Karwar, near Kali river mouth is studied for foraminiferal tracers of palaeomonsoons. The climate history of this core which represents the last 4,500 years approximately revealed the evidences of a significant change in the intensity of the precipitation around 2,000 years BP.

Statistics relating to the date of onset of the southwest monsoon over Kerala for the 100-year period 1891-1990 reveal that the mean and median dates of onset for south Kerala are 31 May and 1 June, with a standard deviation of 8.5 days. Declaring the date of monsoon onset is not a straightforward matter. However, rainfall pattern, uppper air circulation features and INSAT cloud pictures are useful guides, and these indicate that the onset date in 1990 esd 17-18 May. During 1891-1990 there have been onlyy 12 years in which the date of onset over Kerala has been on or before 18 May.

A research paper by Gowariker have used multiple and power regression involving 15 independent variables for long range forecasting of monsoon rainfall in India. They have also argued that, when most of the independent variables are 'favourable' almost invariably the monsoon rainfall is normal. In this note we formalize this approach using a parsimonious logistic regression model. The probability of a normal rainfall can be assessed in most cases using only five of the 15 variables.

Some legitimate questions have been raised over the green credentials of wind turbines. Politics must not block research where it is needed. (Editorial)

With the growing threat of food insecurity and a largely erratic rainfall pattern, Kerala, despite its very high rate of annual precipitation, has embarked on a series of large budget irrigation schemes. However, with the shift in acreage in favour of certain cash crops which demand relatively less moisture, the requirement of water in agriculture may change.