On 29 December 2020, the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China held the 2019 Annual Conference on Statistics of Chinese Scientific Papers and released the 2020 Directory of Outstanding S&T Journals of China. This directory includes the 5th Edition of Outstanding S&T Journals of China and the 5th Edition of China's Internationally Outstanding S&T Journals. The former lists 300 high-quality Chinese-language science and technology journals, while the latter includes 20 high-quality English-language science and technology journals from China.

Journal of Applied Meteorological Science was selected for the 5th Edition of Outstanding S&T Journals of China. This means it is also a source journal for the F5000 – Top Academic Papers of China Outstanding Science and Technology Journals project.