The Bureau of Meteorology operates as a single integrated national meteorological science and service organisation serving equally and concurrently the meteorological and related needs and responsibilities of both the Commonwealth and the States.

The Bureau's Head Office in Melbourne serves as both an administrative and operational headquarters. It provides overall national strategic planning, management and coordination of the Bureau's integrated observations, telecommunications and computing infrastructure and its weather, climate and hydrological services. Following a restructure in January 2004, it consists of three divisions (Services and Systems, Research and Corporate), seven branches (Observations and Engineering, Communications and Computing Systems, Weather and Ocean Services Policy, National Operations, Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, Executive and International Affairs and Management) and a commercial section (Special Services Unit). The administrative structure for the Bureau of Meteorology as of January 2004 is displayed in Figure 2.

Regional Offices are located in each State capital and in Darwin. Each Regional Office includes a Regional Forecasting Centre and a Flood Warning Centre, and the Perth, Darwin and Brisbane offices also house Tropical Cyclone Warning Centres. The Darwin office also serves as the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre for aviation. These offices are responsible for all the operational and service activities in the State or Territory concerned.

The Bureau maintains a network of field offices across the Australian continent, on neighbouring islands and in Antarctica (Figure 3), as well as national networks of some 500 paid cooperative observers and approximately 6000 voluntary rainfall observers.

More information on Executive responsibility and current senior staffing of the Bureau is provided in the Corporate Governance chapter.

Figure 2. Following a restructure in January 2004, the basic administrative structure of the Bureau of Meteorology showing the Bureau Executive, the Head Office Divisions and Branches and the geographical division into seven Regions.

Figure 3. Bureau of Meteorology Regional Offices and Regional Forecasting Centre areas of responsibility as at 30 June 2004. The network of Field Meteorological Offices is also shown.