A UNIVERSITY study has claimed we should should brace ourselves for the coldest winter in decades - with the infamous Beast from the East set to return.

The study, conducted by climate experts at University College London (UCL), forecasts bitterly cold weather in January and February thanks to factors including sea temperatures and air pressure over the North Atlantic.

The pattern the team has predicted would allow Arctic air to flow into the UK, with a return to the bitter Beast from the East conditions felt in February 2018.

But according to the Met Office, it's about too soon to bank on snow days or stress over high heating bills.

A Met Office meteorologist said: "There is a chance that it will be a colder than average winter. I think there's a fairly good chance it will be colder than last year, partly because last winter was fairly mild.

"But the Met Office isn't saying it's going to be the coldest winter in 10 years at the moment because it's far too early to tell."

The UCL forecast looks at how the North Atlantic Oscillation, or NAO, is going to go, Burkill explained.

The NAO is a large see-saw in the Atlantic, which balances the changes in pressure over the Azores Islands and Iceland.

hese pressure changes have a strong influence on winter weather and climate patterns in Europe This winter, its predicted that the NAO will be negative, which typically signals a chilly pattern for the UK.

The spokesman said: "When it's negative, more often than not, it leads to a colder winter for the UK.

"But there's no guarantee that it will be negative and, even if it is, there's no guarantee it will be colder than average.

"There are lots of other things that can impact our weather and lots of things that can change between now and then," he said.

The UCL scientists predicted that the average temperature in January to February will be 0.5C below the 1981 to 2010 average for those months.

In a paper, the team led by Mark Saunders, professor of climate prediction at UCL, wrote: "This would rank 2020 January-February central England as the coldest winter since January-February 2013.

"It would also rank January-February 2020 as the seventh coldest winter in the last 30 years, and the 23rd coldest winter since 1953."

The UCL forecast was based on a study of the jet stream, which blows west to east above the Atlantic and has a huge influence on the weather in the British Isles.

If the jet stream moves to the south, the British Isles freeze in Arctic weather systems.