Indian scientists have travelled to the Arctic to study everything from air pollution to how plants might yield cures for disease.
Boxes of scientific equipment in Ny Alesund, on a Norwegian island 1,200 km (750 miles) from the North Pole, are marked “First Indian Arctic Expedition 2007″, a sign of widening interest in a region where climate change is happening twice as fast as elsewhere on the planet.
I ran into one of the five Indian scientists involved in Arctic research in Ny Alesund, where the first snows of the “winter” have fallen even though the midnight sun of the “summer” is still a few days from setting.
“We are collecting soil, water and rock samples for investigation,” said S.M. Singh, a scientist at the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research in Goa, India, showing off two samples of lichen on rocks collected from near Ny Alesund.
One of them looks a bit like a stain on the rock with a few dots, the other resembles a small piece of seaweed.
Singh, who has visited Antarctica twice, says the Arctic is a richer biological region. “In Antarctica there are only two flowering plants, here there are more than 200 types,” he said.
And living things at the frosty ends of the earth may have special survival skills and could yield clues to helping slow ageing, perhaps by production of anti-oxidants, he said. Or microbial life might help in the treatment of leucoderma, a disease that causes white patches on the skin.
“If we can know how they work it could have big applications in medicine,” he said.
Other Indian researchers are studying the Arctic atmosphere and geology during the trip. Many other nations, ranging from the Nordic nations to South Korea, have research operations in Ny Alesund.
Singh said working in the Arctic was not unlike being in the Antarctic — except that scientists in the north have to be wary of polar bears.
All visitors must be able to use a gun in case they are attacked. Singh said he had yet to see a bear near Ny Alesund, where the odd reindeer wanders down the main street.