We all know the typical Christmas stereotypes - Santa, presents, the tree, and of course, snow. It adorns our Christmas cards, but is it a reality?

We are seeing less and less of the white stuff in Britain during the Christmas season, especially in more southern areas. Everyone is told to dream of a 'white Christmas' but each year seems to be more and more mild than the last. So why is this?

Global warming immediately springs to mind. A hotly discussed current affairs topic, it's an issue that affects all of us the world over. Whether you are a climate change denier (see president-elect Donald Trump) or an environmental activist for improvement like the charity Greenpeace, you have to have noticed that our local area just isn't catching the snow as much as it used to.

The average temperature around London this year was 8-9C, close to a new record, as last year we were experiencing numbers in the minus. NASA predicted that 2016 would be one of the hottest years on record since the 1950s, but our Christmas appears to have been warmer. There are many reasons for why the white Christmas we wanted didn't come this year.

One of them is one we all know: the Jet Stream. This global channel of air current spewed some cold air on us from America and Canada the week previously, but the Met Office has said that the sudden rise could be due to the strong El Nino weather phenomenon, where the Pacific becomes unusually warm and disrupts global weather patterns. Some have blamed this on global warming. We may not have gotten snow this year, but we can all tell our kids that Frosty didn't have time...

By Caitlin van Bommel