From Kannur to Ny-Alesund, researcher tracks pollutants into the Arctic

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Manoj P. Rayaroth, Assistant Professor, GITAM School of Science, holds a water sample near a glacier-fed landscape at Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard during the Indian Arctic Expedition 2026-27.

Polar regions may appear remote on a map, but their isolation makes them important sites for climate research, says Manoj Panayamthatta Rayaroth, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, GITAM School of Science.

“To study climate change, we need research in such isolated areas,” he says. What is released elsewhere can eventually reach the Arctic. “If you dispose of some chemical here, it can reach the Arctic because all the oceans are interconnected,” he says.

Mr. Manoj recently completed a research assignment at Ny-Ålesund in Svalbard, Norway, as part of the Indian Arctic Expedition 2026-27. He was deputed from August 17 to September 14, excluding the travel period.

His days in the Arctic were shaped by water and wind. He collected fjord water and glacier meltwater from a boat, while rough weather often forced the team to suspend sampling. Temperatures remained between 2°C and 4°C. For most of his stay, daylight continued round the clock, with about two hours of darkness appearing only during the final days.

The glacier-fed rivers were constantly changing. “The melting changes every day, and if you check every six hours, the weather changes,” he says.

He stayed at Himadri, India’s research station established in 2008, which can accommodate eight scientists. Meals were prepared in a common kitchen shared by researchers from several countries. During his stay, he met scientists who had worked in the region for 20 to 25 years.

It rained for two or three days during his stay. “They were saying that there was not this much rain before,” he recalls.

His journey to the Arctic began years ago. As a B.Sc. student, he was among 35 students taken to the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) in Goa, where scientists who had returned from the Arctic spoke about their work. “That excitement was in our minds at that time,” he says.

In 2011, as a project fellow at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, he worked on the removal of endosulfan from environmental samples and visited affected areas in Kasaragod, near his native Kannur. “People are still struggling because of endosulfan,” he says.

After completing his Ph.D. in 2017, he pursued postdoctoral research in South Korea, Germany, Poland, France and the United States before joining GITAM in 2024.

His opportunity to join the Arctic expedition came through a call for research proposals on the NCPOR website. His proposal, with N.V.S. Venugopal, Professor, GITAM School of Science, as Co-Principal Investigator, was defended before a panel and subsequently accepted, with one berth allotted to the team.

The project seeks to study how organic pollutants transform in Arctic ice and meltwater and how they eventually reach the sea.

The samples are expected to reach Visakhapatnam in a month or two, and the research team has not yet arrived at any findings. Mr. Manoj, however, says his next objective is to move beyond monitoring towards mitigation.

“Monitoring everyone can do, but mitigation can be done by only a few,” he says.

C. Kavitha, Director, School of Science, GITAM, who joined the conversation, said she hoped that students would be given opportunities to participate in such national research projects in the future.

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