In order to better understand the development of atmospheric sciences in the world and provide a guidance for the optimization and the adjustment of the course setting for atmospheric sciences for universities and colleges in China, this paper collects over 7000 graduation theses on atmospheric sciences in the German-speaking regions from 1969 to 2015, and analyzes the variations of the number of theses in each year, and explores the reasons for the rapid growth of the number of theses. It is shown that the number of theses on the atmospheric sciences in the German-speaking regions see obvious phases during the past 47 years, which can be roughly divided into three periods:the slow growth period, the rapid growth period, and the accelerated growth period. The growth rate of the first two periods is mainly related to the population growth, the growth rate in the third period is closely related to the social needs and the technological innovation. With the refining of the research directions in the atmospheric science field, since the 1990s, the differences between the proportions of different research directions are narrowed, as compared with those in the 1970s and the 1980s; in the past 47 years, the five research directions with the highest proportions among the 27 research directions are the atmospheric sounding, the applied meteorology, the climate and climate change, the atmospheric physics, and the dynamic meteorology, where the growth rate of the number of theses on applied meteorology is the highest, especially in the past 20 years, which means that the interdiscipline researches of atmospheric sciences and other industries are booming, and this trend will be further strengthened with the increasing social demand.

atmospheric science  /  research direction  /  variation characters  /  German-speaking regions