SAS boasts an expert team of the Program of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Jiangsu Province, 2 Outstanding Jiangsu High School Scientific Innovation Teams——the Typhoon and Meso-scale Meteorology Team and the Data Assimilation and Meso-scale Meteorology Team, 2 Jiangsu High School Scientific Innovation Teams of the “Qinglan Project”——the Climate Modeling and Forecast Team and the East Asian Monsoon and Regional Climate Change Team, and one Outstanding Talent Collective of the “6 Peaks of Talents Project” of Jiangsu Province——the Climatic Diagnosis and Prediction Team. Meanwhile, innovation teams have also been built in areas such as Data Assimilation Research and Application, Climate Dynamics and Earth System Modeling.

SAS has already formed 6 main research directions that are most distinctive and relatively stable in the domestic atmospheric science circle: Atmospheric Circulation and Its Dynamic Process, Monsoon and Air-sea-land Interaction, Numerical Modeling and Climate Prediction, Meteorological Data Processing and Assimilation Application, Meso-scale Meteorology and Typhoon, and Climate Change and Regional Response. Regarding academic performance, SAS ranks among the best in the domestic Atmospheric Science circle due to tremendous research achievements it has made. It successively wins over 140 scientific awards of various kinds and levels, including: 3 international awards, 2 National Awards for Natural Sciences, 8 National Awards for Progress in Science and Technology, 11 National Scientific Conference Awards, 15 Jiangsu Provincial Awards for Progress in Science and Technology, and 4 Jiangsu Provincial Scientific Conference Awards. In 2015, Prof. Bin Wang, the overseas dean of SAS, was awarded with the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest award for Atmospheric Science.

In the recent 5 years, SAS has led or participated in over 420 research projects. It has received 2 grants from “Project 973”, 1 from the “Global Change” National Key Research and Development Program, 1 from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, 7 from the National Science Fund for Key Programs, and nearly 120 from other national or key programs. Scientific research funds of SAS have witnessed a rapid growth, with the total grants for research projects increasing from RMB 34.88 million in 2012 to RMB 75.16 million in 2016. Compared with its domestic counterparts, the growth rate of the scientific research funds of SAS ranks among the fastest, and the total amount of that ranks among the largest. In the meantime, SAS has published 12 academic and translated works as well as over 1550 high-quality papers, among which 450 are accepted by SCI (E), including 1 published by the top international journal SCIENCE.

SAS has set up several research units, such as the Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disasters of MOE, the Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing Atmospheric Data Center of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Data Assimilation Research Center, the Pacific Typhoon Research Center, the Earth System Modeling Center, and the Climate Dynamics Research Center. Collaborating with famous foreign universities such as the University of Hawaii, the Florida State University and the University of Oklahoma, SAS has established the International Joint Laboratory on Climate and Environmental Change, which is one of the first 3 international joint laboratories approved by MOE.