Growing populations, climactic change and natural disasters had profoundly affected agricultural productivity.

Although the novel is moving on the surface as a retelling of a climactic struggle, some readers consider it a symbolic parallel to the defeat of Japan in World War II.

After all, if left unchecked, global warming has the potential to degrade and destroy the climactic conditions that underlay and made possible the rise of human civilization over the last ten millennia.

Maybe the terrible floods in Pakistan and China are not the direct result of climate change. But the evidence seems to suggest that variations in climactic conditions are increasing in scale and frequency.

Complicating matters further are geographical and climactic disparities among constituencies. The Himalayan highlands, for example, will remain snowbound until May, by which time monsoon rains will have begun to sweep southern and northeastern India.

In addition to the above noted activities, scientific and other research related activities that were reported on included studies on ozone variation, temperature influences on ozone, the interaction between ozone and climate and climactic profiles of ozone.