Climate Services form one the Bureau's eight major outputs and contribute to one of the four output groups, Output 1.3 - Meteorological and Related Services.

Outputs from Climate Services include a complete quality controlled archive of Australian and regional climate data in basic and processed forms; the provision of basic and processed climate data and information from that archive in various formats and on various media; routine Australian, southern hemisphere and global analyses of the monthly, annual and longerterm behaviour of climate; and seasonal climate outlooks for Australia.

OUTPUT PERFORMANCE 2003-04 

Output performance is measured against a number of quantity, quality and price targets. The results achieved for 2003-04 are provided below along with a commentary on significant variations.

The volume of surface hourly climate data to which quality control is applied continued to increase (Figure 26), with a consequent increase in the quality control effort required. The percentage of regular archive entries into the national climate database that were successfully completed within preset quality control standards was above the 96 per cent target for the eighth consecutive year (Figure 27). The growth in automated service delivery was driven largely by Internet demand, which grew by approximately 32 per cent.

The quality of climate data products and service provision was assessed by user surveys undertaken by each Regional Climate Section and the National Climate Centre (NCC). The percentage of users that were satisfied or very satisfied with the climate services received was well above the 85 per cent target.