A NORTH Wales woman is spending Christmas on a tiny island in Antarctica with only a few colleagues, and 40,000 fur seals for company.
Paula Roberts is spending 14 weeks on the island of Signy, 6.5km long and 5km wide, collecting soil samples as part of a British Antarctic Survey (BAS) mission.
Their work could provide vital new evidence of global warming.
The 41-year-old Llanberis woman, who is completing a Phd in soil science at Bangor university, hopes to come home with a large batch of samples.
She said: "Using high-tech equipment, I will be able to analyse the soil to see how climate change will affect the island's only two flowering plants, a grass and a moss."
Paula, who has previously worked on Bardsey and was a countryside ranger with the National Trust, will be joining the expedition, which coincides with Antarctica's summer, at the end of the month.
Her home until the middle of March will be a revamped BAS station.
There is permanent ice cover over a large part of the island which rises to 288 metres.
In the summer, extensive areas of moss and some grasses are exposed, and there are numerous freshwater pools and lakes.
The station was established in 1947 primarily as a meteorological base.
It was then developed in 1963 into a biological station with living accommodation, laboratories and diving facilities, together with vessels for work at sea.
Signy was the centre of BAS biological science until 1995 when the marine component was transferred to Rothera.
In 1995-96 the station was rebuilt for the third time for a new role as a summer only station supporting studies in terrestrial and freshwater biology.
It is open from November to April, but throughout the year an automatic camera records sea ice conditions in order to maintain the 50-year record obtained when the station was continuously occupied.
History of a far-off island
* Signy is part of the South Orkney Islands which lie on the south side of the Scotia Sea.
* They were first charted by Captain George Powell during a sealing expedition in which he virtually exterminated the entire fur seal population.
* The islands are part of the British Antarctic Territory.
* The name derives from Fru Signy, the wife of Kapt Peter Sorelle who surveyed the island in in 1911 for a whaling company.
* It is separated from the larger Coronation Island by the mile wide Normanna Strait.
* The research base is in the ruins of a whaling station built in 1920 by a Norwegian whaling company under British licence.