The weather may have warmed up in recent days, but don't be lulled into a false sense of security - weeks of snow and ice are on the way, the Met Office warned today.

The forecasting agency has recorded a sudden rise in temperatures at the North Pole, which usually triggers a phenomenon known as a polar vortex. This can lead to a long spell of colder than usual weather here in the UK.

Prof Adam Scaife, of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said: “Signs of this event appeared in forecasts from late January and in the last few days we have seen a dramatic rise in air temperature, known as a Sudden Stratospheric Warming, at around 30km above the North Pole. This warming results from a breakdown of the usual high-altitude westerly winds and it often leads to a switch in our weather, with cold easterly conditions more likely to dominate subsequent UK weather.”

Computer simulations carried out by Met Office boffins are currently predicting heavy snow across the UK in late February, as a direct result of events at the North Pole.

Frank Saunders, chief operational meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “A Sudden Stratospheric Warming implies around a 70 per cent chance of cold conditions across the UK.  There tends to be a lag of about 10 days before we see the downstream effects on the UK’s weather, as it takes time for the influence in the upper atmosphere to feed down to those levels where our weather happens.

“The outcome for the UK’s weather is still uncertain, but forecasts from computer models at the Met Office and at other centres are beginning to coalesce around a greater likelihood of cold conditions in the days and weeks to come.”