Bibliometric analysis of atmospheric simulation trends in meteorology and atmospheric science journals: Update

Abstract

This study was conceived to evaluate the global scientific output of atmospheric simulation research and to assess the characteristics of research tendencies in the articles from 1990 to 2016. Data were based on the publications in the category of “meteorology & atmospheric sciences” from the Science Citation Index Expanded database. By synthetic analysis of author keywords, KeyWords Plus, titles and abstracts, it was concluded that the hottest topics in this field were climate, surface, temperature and precipitation; air pollutants of most concern were particulate matter, nitrogen oxides and ozone; emission inventory, sensitivity analysis, satellites, parameterization, schemes, and data assimilation were the most widely used tools in atmospheric modeling. Among the analyzed countries, China has experienced the highest increase in productivity. Due to the challenge of severe air pollution and a series of positive policies including intensive financial input, the atmospheric simulation research in China was very prosperous during the last ten years and its number of articles ranked the second since 2012.