The role of the National Meteorological & Oceanographic Centre (NMOC) is to:

• serve as the central real-time operational hub for Australia's national weather service by:
  • maintaining a nationwide weather watch
  • providing centralised guidance products to the Regional Forecasting Centres
  • issuing a range of analysis and prediction products
  • supporting the operational communications and computing infrastructure
• perform the international functions of:
  • a World Meteorological Centre (WMC) and Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) World Weather Watch (WWW),
  • a Regional Area Forecast Centre (RAFC) of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) World Area Forecast (WAF) System.
  • a National Data Processing Centre of the WMO Integrated Global Ocean Services System
• produce a definitive archive of Australian weather.

NMOC currently has 60 staff. Of these 40 are devoted to maintaining an operational weather watch, preparing weather charts, monitoring the automated procedures for collection and distribution of raw and processed data and supporting the communications and computing systems. A further 17 staff develop and implement new automated systems, as well as maintaining and improving existing operational systems. The remaining 3 staff look after management and administration.

The main functions of NMOC are:

• providing a suite of high quality analysis and prediction products to support meteorological and marine weather and climate services. Some products are produced manually but most products derive from computer models of the atmosphere and ocean.
• assessing and implementing upgrades to operational numerical models, and providing relevant verification statistics and evaluations of model performance
• ensuring the receipt and transmission of meteorological data and products within Australia and internationally and contributing to the quantity and quality monitoring of data exchanged internationally
• preparing and disseminating products to support domestic and international aviation
• serving as a WMO Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre (RSMC) for Environmental Emergency Response. In this role NMOC can operate an atmospheric transport model to predict the movement of atmospheric contaminants such as smoke, volcanic ash or radioactive debris.
• providing a Help Desk to provide support to users of the Bureau's national computing and communications infrastructure
• working with Services areas in looking for new and innovative ways to enhance Bureau services, particularly in applications of numerical model output such as UV-B prediction or tropical cyclone storm surge models.

Central Operations:
This is the largest group, and is charged with the task of running the combined operational components of NMOC: meteorological analysis and prediction, national and international communications and the Central Computing Facility (which supports the integrated data processing needs of the Bureau's climate and research centres and meteorological satellite systems). An aviation unit serves the needs of high level aviation operations, providing forecast guidance and an alerting system for areas of turbulence.

Meteorological Systems Development:
The task of this group is to test, implement, monitor and maintain the suite of NMOC's operational meteorological models and supports the Darwin RSMC with its computer analysis and prediction systems.

Software Systems:
This group is responsible for the management of the software standards throughout the operational suite, and acts as the systems integrator, liaising closely with those areas of the Bureau developing systems for operational implementation. This group is also responsible for the administration and development of the real-time database.

Oceanographic Systems Development:
This group's task is to test, implement, monitor and assist in the development of models and numerical techniques for the analysis and prediction of sea state and ocean structure, as well as to manage and develop access to new types of oceanographic data.

Real-time Data Management:
This group focuses on the development of systems to meet our requirements and obligations for national and international data. It also carries out data quality and quantity monitoring and produces performance statistics of the numerical systems.