The AMS Education Team worked with Jono Hey, of the Sketchplanations newsletter, to develop a library of scientific sketches that describe key concepts in meteorology and oceanography. These sketches are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, meaning they are free for non-commercial use. Feel free to use them in your classroom, lessons, etc., attributing to Jono Hey and the American Meteorological Society.  

Meteorology

• 3-stage Life Cycle of a “Pulse Thunderstorm”
• Atmospheric Boundary Layer
• Atmospheric Stability
• Collision and Coalescence in Clouds
• Doppler Radar: The Basics
• Doppler Radar: Polarization
• Doppler Radar: Beam angle
• Earth’s Energy Budget
• Flash Drought
• Forces of Wind
  • Version A
  • Version B
• Gravity Waves
• Highs and Lows
• Hurricane Storm Surge
• Hurricane Eyewall Regeneration
• Latent Heat
• Relative Humidity
• Profile of a Cold Front- Anafronts, Katafronts, Occluded fronts
• Self-Lifting of Wildfire Smoke
• Terminal Velocity: Size of raindrops vs. updrafts and air resistance
• Tornadic Supercells
• Weather Model Resolution

Oceanography

• Coastal Upwelling and Downwelling
• Deep-Water to Shallow-Water Waves
• Ocean Gyre Development
• Phases of ENSO
• Spring and Neap Tides
• Surface Prevailing Winds
• Thermocline
• The Ekman Spiral
• The Walker Circulation

Climate

• Causes of Climate Change
• Marine Ice-Sheet Instability
• Proxy Data
  • What is Proxy Data
  • Climate Proxy Data Sources
• Radar Sensing of Antarctic Ice Sheets

These sketches were partially supported by grants from NOAA and NSF COLDEX. 

Additional sketches are in development and will be added to this library. And even more sketches on a wide variety of topics can be found at the Sketchplanations website. 

We also offer a library of free K-12 curriculum modules on key topics around weather, water, and climate.