There is a long and growing list of nearly 80 women researchers and doctors who are doing their bit for India’s Antarctica programme. One of them is Dr. Neeraja Balakrishna, (32), an MD in Anaesthesiology and Critical Care. She is the medical officer on the station, catering to the medical needs of the 24 scientific and maintenance staff posted this year to run the year-round station through the isolation of a nine-month winter on this ongoing 42nd Indian Scientific Expedition to Antarctica (ISEA). A national-level champion swimmer, the Bangalore-based doctor vied, in her second attempt, with 39 other doctors, four of whom were chosen for the much-coveted, prestigious, and career-defining assignment to man Maitri and Bharati, India’s two operational Antarctic stations. Strategically located on the same 70 degree longitude as India, Bharati in East Antarctica is India’s three-storied, state-of-theart, centrally heated station on the south polar ice sheet and glacier continent of Antarctica. Outside, the temperature is minus 22 degrees. When the polar night of this 2023 austral winter will set in, when it is dark for 20+ hours, twilight for just three hours, and the sun never rises. Once a month, DrNeeraja provides medical backup to the eight-member team that heads 60 km out to the site of stake marker points planted by the Geological Survey of India on the Dalk Glacier, whose changing features are being measured in an ongoing 40-year-old experiment. Around 30 institutions in multidisciplinary areas, ranging from atmospheric, biological, earth sciences, glaciology, environment, human physiology and medicine, have run the Antarctica route in the past 42 expeditions.
Dr Balakrishna is not the first lady medic to winter on the 14 million sq. km continent, four times the size of India. Dr Kanwal Vilku of the Central Government Health Services was the first woman ever to winter as a medical officer on the 19th ISEA in 1999. Dr Deviyani Nyandev Borole was on the 25th ISEA in 2005.In 1983, for the first time two Indian women scientists joined what was then a challenging expedition.
Here are a few other women who have contributed to this mission.
Shipra Sinha was just 26 in 2019 and specialising in High Latitude Physics and Aurora studies at the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism (IIG). On the ISEA that year, she furthered her data collection in her areas of study, besides monitoring the data collection of 14 experiments that the IIG has been running on Maitri.
Dr Cheryl Noronha-D’Mello, a sediment geochemist and palaeoclimate researcher with the NCPOR, pieces together weathering history by studying the transport of major and minor elements of the periodic table from source to sink, tracing what affected them in the past and in the present. Part of the 41st ISEA (she was also on the 39th expedition) Noronha-D’Mello (then 34) and her team stationed themselves on floating pontoons in the middle of lakes to obtain 18 sediment cores from 11 lakes of East Antarctica, near Bharati.
Dr Michelle Fernandes, who specialises in carbon chemistry, collected water samples from 17 East Antarctica lakes to track baseline carbon dioxide composition
Rupali Pal, Scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), measured ground level environmental radiation on the three continents of Antarctica, Africa, and Asia, besides analysing cosmic rays during the 35th ISEA. She has also investigated baseline levels of natural radioactivity in soils, rocks and lakes of Larsemann Hills in East Antarctica.
Dr Girija Rajaram of the IIG studied dramatic magnetic pattern changes (from quiet and calm to disturbed within three-hour periods) over Maitri during the 18th ISEA and demonstrated that sub Auroral regions were far better than Auroral locations to sense disturbances in Geospace and interplanetary weather.
Dr Geetha Priya M. (40), Professor at the Centre for Incubation, Innovation, Research and Consultancy (CIIRC), successfully completed 19 aerial surveys using drones fitted with multispectral sensors over East Antarctica. Neelu Singh of the Forest Research Institute, in 2009 (28th ISEA), assessed dissolved mercury content, collecting water samples from 15 freshwater lakes in the Schirmacher Hills area and from 15 lakes in the Larsemann Hills area near Maitri and Bharati stations, which are 100 km apart.
Roseline C. Thakur, also of the FRI, in 2009, analysed the presence of trace elements in the aerosols near the stations to map climate change effects in that sensitive high latitude area.
Vartika Singh of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP) collected sediment and water samples to assess climate change impact of microfossils for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction.
Prof. Laxmi Bishnoi of the National Physical Laboratory has worked on characterising the marine and atmospheric boundary layer over East Antarctica, a process that helps understand communication problems faced over marine environments.
Dr P.A. LokaBharathi and the team of the National Institute of Oceanography who were part of the 13th ISEA in 1993-94 used an underwater radiometer to profile the ozone hole UV radiation and assess and compare primary production of surface and column chlorophyll in phytoplankton communities in Antarctic waters near 15 stations and six temperate ocean water sites during the expedition’s ocean voyage. Preeti Oswal of the National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) conducted pilot experiments and field observation of lichen ecology during the 25th ISEA.
Dr Binita Phartiyal of BSIP analysed water samples from 30 lakes, as well as sediment samples and 10 sediment cores to assess the climatic history and landscape evolution of the Schirmacher Oasis.
Source: Story byPamela D’mello, The Frontline
