A Legacy in the Making: “Science in Service to Society” in the BAMS Archive

This year's Annual Meeting theme, “Earth System Science in Service to Society,” according to AMS President Sandy McDonald, “conveys the flow inherent in the nearly 100-year history of the AMS…continually making the advances of science available to the public and policy makers.” This presentation will examine the past pages of the AMS's publication of record, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, for this historical flow of “science to service.” A recent case, for example, is the progress from basic climate change research to the development of fast-response papers documenting climatic causes of extreme events.

We will choose historical examples of the bond between these twin excellences of the AMS community—research and applications—as they've been portrayed in BAMS. Our intent is to (1) shed light on the history of the earth system science community and (2) underscore to historians (and other history teachers) the value of the new BAMS Legacy Project, which is creating a complete, open digital archive of the publication back to its founding in 1920.