In this issue of Weather

We begin this month's issue of Weather with an examination of the products becoming available from high‐resolution mesoscale models, able to resolve significant clouds. In ‘Simulated satellite imagery at sub‐kilometre resolution by the Hong Kong Observatory’ on p. 139, KK Hon shows the increasing value of the new AVM model as an aid to forecasters at a busy airport. Its performance at short range is demonstrated as significant and the similarity of its simulated clouds to those observed by satellite is impressive. The River Nile gave birth to the Ancient Egyptian culture, closely linked through Greece and Rome to that of much of the Old World. However, its plentiful watersupply – peaking in summer, unlike most other desert rivers – was a great mystery to the Ancient Egyptians and the Classical thinkers, as explained by Ian Strangeways in ‘The Nile River: an enigma’ on p. 145. It is only in the past 170 years or so that we have come to understand this river, as its whole course has been plotted through northeastern Africa. During the 19th Century, many European countries founded societies of people interested in the weather and the development of meteorological science. However, it is only in the past three decades that any significant links between these societies have become established, even though National Meteorological Services in Europe – and their predecessors – have been exchanging weather data for more than 150 years.A detailed description of the development of these links begins on p. 149 in ‘Associating weather societies across Europe, Part 1’ by René Morin and Jon Wieringa. Since radiosondes have been able to sound the stratosphere, a notable change of winds from westerly to easterly on an approximate 2‐year time scale has been notable. But how can we investigate stratospheric winds in earlier times? On p. 154, ‘Exploring the “prehistory” of the equatorial stratosphere with observations following major volcanic eruptions’ by Kevin Hamilton and T Sakazaki provides some answers by using accounts of red skies in the tropical zone formed due to the effects of volcanic aerosols. ‘The application of a single‐model ensemble system to the seasonal prediction of winter temperatures for Islamabad and Lahore using coupled general circulation models’ by Bushra Khalid, Cholaw Bueh, Shumaila Javeed, Shaukat Ali, Qaiser Sultana and Ayesha Khalid is on p. 159. Although the resolution of global models provides some challenges, the value of using perturbations of the analyses of these models can be seen in data produced for site‐specific forecasts.