Revealed: the racy novel written by the world's most powerful climate scientist

The chair of the UN's panel on climate change Dr Rajendra Pachauri has taken a break from writing academic papers on global warming to pen a racey romantic novel.

As the UN's climate change chief, Dr Rajendra Pachauri has spent his career writing only the driest of academic articles. But the latest offering from the chairman of the UN's climate change panel is an altogether racier tome.

Some might even suggest Dr Pachauri's first novel is frankly smutty.

Return to Almora, published in Dr Pachauri's native India earlier this month, tells the story of Sanjay Nath, an academic in his 60s reminiscing on his "spiritual journey" through India, Peru and the US.

On the way he encounters, among others, Shirley MacLaine, the actress, who appears as a character in the book. While relations between Sanjay and MacLaine remain platonic, he enjoys sex – a lot of sex – with a lot of women.

In breathless prose that risks making Dr Pachauri, who will be 70 this year, a laughing stock among the serious, high-minded scientists and world leaders with whom he mixes, he details sexual encounter after sexual encounter.