About Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences

Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences

Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (大气科学, Daqi Kexue; abbreviated CJAS) is a Chinese-language academic journal of atmospheric science published in Beijing. It was launched in 1976, is sponsored by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is published and distributed by Science Press. The journal carries ISSN 1006-9895 and Chinese standard serial number CN 11-1768/O4, appears bimonthly, and publishes in Chinese with English abstracts through the Institute's journal platform at iapjournals.ac.cn. It is regarded as one of China's highest-level journals in atmospheric science, reporting innovative research across dynamic meteorology, synoptic meteorology, climatology, numerical weather prediction, atmospheric physics and atmospheric chemistry.

The journal should not be confused with its English-language sibling. The same institute also sponsors Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, an English-language journal founded in 1984 and published with Springer, which serves an international readership. The Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences is the earlier, Chinese-language title: launched eight years before its English companion, it is where Chinese atmospheric scientists publish for their domestic research community, with English abstracts making its contents discoverable abroad.

Launch in 1976 and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics

The Institute of Atmospheric Physics' own publications page records the journal's essential facts in a few lines: Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, in Chinese with English abstracts, ISSN 1006-9895, CN 11-1768/O4, bimonthly, launched in 1976, sponsored by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published and distributed by Science Press.

A 1976 launch places the journal among the generation of Chinese scientific titles created or revived as China's research system was rebuilt in the late 1970s, and it gave atmospheric science — a field in which China has distinctive national needs, from monsoon forecasting to the meteorology of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau — a dedicated national journal at the discipline's leading institute. The Institute of Atmospheric Physics is the Chinese Academy of Sciences' principal institute for atmospheric research, home to work on climate dynamics, geophysical fluid dynamics and Earth system modelling; a journal edited from that institute sits at the centre of the field it covers.

Fifty years on, the journal's article numbering shows a publication in full activity. Articles accepted in 2026 carry DOIs in the journal's established form, 10.3878/j.issn.1006-9895 followed by the manuscript number, and its in-press listings — peer-reviewed, accepted papers not yet assigned to a volume but citable by DOI — show work on subjects from an hourly relative humidity dataset for China's surface automatic weather stations to machine-learning models for rainy-season precipitation prediction in Southwest China.

Scope: the atmospheric sciences in full

The Institute's description states that CJAS publishes basic and applied research papers on the science of meteorology and related fields of atmospheric physics and chemistry, climate systems and geophysical and planetary fluids. The journal's own scope summary, reproduced in journal directories, expands that into the field's working sub-disciplines: it mainly reports innovative research results in atmospheric science, publishing dynamic meteorology, synoptic science, climatology, numerical weather prediction, atmospheric physics and atmospheric chemistry, together with comprehensive reviews of the latest creative papers and research progress, at home and abroad, in major sub-disciplines such as atmospheric detection, weather modification and applied meteorology.

Each element of that scope corresponds to a real research community. Dynamic meteorology studies the motions of the atmosphere theoretically — the circulation systems, waves and instabilities that produce weather. Synoptic meteorology analyses weather systems as they are observed, the foundation of forecasting. Climatology examines the statistics and dynamics of climate, including the East Asian monsoon and China's climate variability. Numerical weather prediction builds and evaluates the models on which modern forecasting depends. Atmospheric physics and chemistry cover radiation, clouds and precipitation, aerosols and atmospheric composition. Atmospheric detection — observation technology — and weather modification and applied meteorology connect the science to practice.

Data papers, reanalysis and applied atmospheric research

The journal's in-press and recent articles show the scope operating at its contemporary edge. Data papers, such as the development of a Chinese forage dataset covering 1981–2023 and the hourly relative humidity dataset, reflect atmospheric science's growing emphasis on curated observational datasets. Studies quantifying cloud water resources over China from CRA atmospheric reanalysis data, analysing atmospheric pollutant emissions from agricultural sources in the Yangtze River Delta, examining extreme precipitation in the Dongting Lake Basin over 1961–2024, and dissecting the low-level jet in the July 2023 heavy rainfall event show the journal publishing simultaneously on observations, reanalysis, environmental applications and case-based synoptic analysis.

The monsoon, the Plateau and climate: characteristic themes

Three themes recur in Chinese atmospheric science and in this journal's record. The first is the East Asian monsoon, the seasonal circulation that governs rainfall over most of China and whose onset, intensity and anomalies determine flood and drought. Chinese research on monsoon dynamics and on the interaction between the monsoon and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycle has been published in this journal for decades; a representative paper in its pages reviewed studies of monsoon dynamics and monsoon–ENSO interaction in 2003.

The second theme is the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, whose elevated heating drives circulation features across Asia. Plateau effects run through Chinese climatology — from the heat source over the Plateau to its influence on the subtropical high over East Asia — and the journal's citation record includes classic papers on the Plateau's role in atmospheric circulation. The third theme is climate change and variability over China: interdecadal changes in precipitation and temperature, the response of extreme events to warming, and the development of climate and Earth system models, an area in which its sponsoring institute is a national leader.

These themes explain the journal's description of itself, repeated in directories, as one of the Chinese journals with the highest academic level in atmospheric science in China. A national journal that publishes the home community's work on the monsoon, the Plateau and China's climate — phenomena on which Chinese scientists hold the deepest observational records — is not merely reporting a field; for several of its subjects it is one of the field's primary archives.

Editorship and publishing arrangements

The Institute of Atmospheric Physics' publications page names the journal's leadership as recorded at the time of that listing: Editor-in-Chief Ronghui Huang, with Aidi Liu as executive editor, and Science Press as publisher and distributor. Ronghui Huang is an atmospheric scientist associated with research on atmospheric circulation and climate. Journal directories compiled later list Lu Riyu as editor-in-chief, which reflects the normal rotation of academic editorships over a journal's life; readers who need the current office-holder should consult the journal's own current masthead at its official site rather than any single directory snapshot.

The publishing model is the standard one for Chinese Academy of Sciences institute journals. The institute sponsors and edits the journal; Science Press — the Academy's publishing house — publishes and distributes it; and the journal is presented online through the institute's journal platform, which it shares with the institute's other titles, including Advances in Atmospheric Sciences and Climatic and Environmental Research. Articles are published in Chinese with English abstracts, a format that serves the domestic research community as its primary audience while keeping every paper's subject and findings visible to international indexing and searching.

Bimonthly publication — six issues a year — has been the journal's rhythm as recorded by its sponsor. Six substantial issues a year is a considerable throughput for a basic-science journal, and it matches the size of the community the journal serves: atmospheric science in China spans the Academy's institutes, the China Meteorological Administration's research system, and university departments across the country.

Standing, metrics and indexing

The journal's sponsor page records one dated but concrete indicator of its domestic citation standing: a 2012 impact factor of 1.454 in the Chinese Scientific and Technical Papers and Citations Databases. That figure is quoted here as a historical marker from the institute's own listing, not as a current metric; journal metrics change annually and should be checked in the current year's databases by anyone who needs them for evaluation.

More durable than any single metric is the journal's position in the structure of Chinese atmospheric science publishing. It is the Chinese-language flagship of the discipline's leading Academy institute, published by Science Press, and described across directories in consistent terms as a top-level national journal in its field. Its articles are cited in the international review literature — surveys of Chinese atmospheric science research over the past seventy years, for example, draw on papers published in CJAS for subjects from climate dynamics to Plateau meteorology — which shows the journal feeding the English-language synthesis literature even though it publishes in Chinese.

Relationship to Advances in Atmospheric Sciences

Its relationship to Advances in Atmospheric Sciences is complementary rather than competitive. Chinese atmospheric scientists route work aimed at an international audience to the English journal, and work aimed at the domestic community — including much fundamental work on Chinese weather and climate — to CJAS. Libraries and bibliometricians need to keep the two titles separate: different languages, different ISSNs (1006-9895 for CJAS), different founding dates, one shared institute.

Reading the journal today

The journal's official home is its page on the Institute of Atmospheric Physics journal platform, where current and in-press articles are listed with their DOIs. The in-press mechanism is worth noting for readers used to slower workflows: accepted papers are posted as citable by DOI before being assigned to a volume and issue, so the journal's newest work — on reanalysis data, machine-learning prediction, datasets and extreme events — is visible as soon as it clears peer review.

For researchers outside China, CJAS is a primary source on the weather and climate of East Asia written by the community that observes it most closely. Its five decades of publication, from 1976 to the present, cover the entire modern development of Chinese atmospheric science: the building of numerical models, the systematic study of the monsoon and the Plateau, the growth of climate dynamics, and the current turn to data-driven and machine-learning methods that its 2026 in-press articles display. A journal that has recorded all of that, from the discipline's central institute, under one title and one ISSN, is an archive of a national science as much as a periodical.

In summary: the Chinese Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (大气科学), ISSN 1006-9895, CN 11-1768/O4, launched in 1976, sponsored by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published by Science Press, bimonthly, in Chinese with English abstracts — is one of China's leading atmospheric science journals, covering dynamic and synoptic meteorology, climatology, numerical prediction, atmospheric physics and chemistry, detection, weather modification and applied meteorology.