Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

• 1. Introduction

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  The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, known to its readers as BAMS, is the flagship publication of the American Meteorological Society. It sits at the center of a community whose work touches everyone who checks a weather forecast, tracks a river's rise, or watches a climate map shift. What makes a scientific publication earn the word flagship? And what does it mean to serve a community as varied as meteorologists, hydrologists, and climate scientists all at once? Those are the questions worth sitting with as we look more closely at what BAMS actually does and who it does it for.

• 2. Purpose and Audience

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  BAMS publishes peer-reviewed articles of interest and significance for what the American Meteorological Society describes as the weather, water, and climate community. That phrase spans a wide range of scientific work. Weather researchers, water scientists, and those studying long-term climate patterns all find their concerns addressed in the same pages. Beyond research articles, BAMS also carries news, editorials, and reviews directed at AMS members. The publication functions both as a record of new scientific findings and as a running conversation within a professional community.

• 3. Open Access and Digital Reach

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  BAMS articles are fully open access, meaning anyone can read the published research without a subscription or institutional login. AMS members receive an additional layer of access: a digital version that replicates the print issue cover to cover. That digital edition often goes beyond the printed page, incorporating enhanced articles with audio and video components. The combination of open-access research and member-exclusive multimedia reflects an effort to serve different readers in different ways, while keeping the core scientific record freely available to the public.