The first four-day international workshop on `Long-term Changes and Trends in the Atmosphere' is being hosted in Pune by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM). Simultaneously on the same day Indian Meteorological Society (IMS) is hosting a four-day national symposium on tropical meteorology in Chennai. The focal theme of this conference is `Meteorology Beyond 2000'.

The four-day international workshop being hosted by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune is sponsored by the department of science and technology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian Space Research Organisation, Bangalore and Indian National Science Academy. The global sponsorers are World Climatic Research Program, Stratospheric Process and their Role in Climate (SPARC), Abdus Salem International Centre for Theoritical Physics, InternationalUnion of Geodesy and Geophysics, International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, Scientific Committee for Solar Terrestrial Physics, International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project, International Commission for Middle Atmosphere, Committee on Space Research, START Regional Committee for Southern Asia and Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution.

The workshop will bring together various frontiers group of scientists from all over the globe in a common platform to discuss and address how the long-term analysis of atmospheric data and model simulations may throw light on the basic issues of climate change and changing atmospheric composition and ionosphere. Another aspect of this event is the future vision, as to what we should expect or foresee for the future in relation to human welfare and human induced pollutants under different scenarios of atmospheric perturbations.

The human society is presently conducting global experiments on earth's atmosphere. These are increasingworldwide atmospheric concentrations of chlorofluoro-carbons, carbon dioxide, methane and several other gases. A growing body of scientific evidences suggest that if these trends continue, then the mounting levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may further increase and threaten the earth's climate and weather leading to substantial adverse impacts in the next century.