Bureau of Meteorology


The Bureau of Meteorology is an Executive Agency of the Australian Government responsible for providing weather services to Australia and surrounding areas. It was established in 1906 under the Meteorology Act, and brought together the state meteorological services that existed before then. The states officially transferred their weather recording responsibilities to the Bureau of Meteorology on 1 January 1908.

Services and structure

The Bureau of Meteorology is the main provider of weather forecasts, warnings and observations to the Australian public. The Bureau distributes weather images via radiofax and is responsible for issuing flood alerts in Australia.
The Bureau's head office is in Melbourne Docklands, which includes the Bureau's Research Centre, the Bureau National Operations Centre, the National Climate Centre, the Victorian Regional Forecasting Centre as well as the Hydrology and Satellite sections.
Regional offices are located in each state and territory capital. 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 Adelaide office incorporates the National Tidal Centre, while the Darwin office the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre and Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology issues Tropical Cyclone Advices and developed the Standard Emergency Warning Signal used for warnings. The Bureau is responsible for tropical cyclone naming for storms in waters surrounding Australia. Three lists of names used to be maintained, one for each of the western, northern and eastern Australian regions. However, as of the start of the 2008–09 Tropical Cyclone Year these lists have been rolled into one main national list of tropical cyclone names.
The regional offices are supported by the Bureau National Operations Centre which is also located at the head office in Melbourne Docklands.
The Bureau maintains a network of field offices across the continent, on neighbouring islands and in Antarctica. There is also a network of some 500 paid co-operative observers and approximately 6,000 voluntary rainfall observers.

Directors

The following people have been directors of the Bureau of Meteorology:
DirectorTerm
Henry Ambrose Hunt1908–31
William S Watt1931–40
H. Norman Warren1940–50
Edward W Timcke1950–55
Leonard J Dwyer1955–62
William J Gibbs1962–78
John Zillman1978–2003
Geoff Love2003–08
Neville Smith 2008–09
Greg Ayers2009–12
Rob Vertessy2012–16
Andrew Johnson6 September 2016–Present

Technology

In the head office a Cray XC40 supercomputer called "Australis" provides the operational computing capability for weather, climate, ocean and wave numerical prediction and simulation, while other Unix servers support the computer message switching system and real-time data base. The Australian Integrated Forecast System affords the main computing infrastructure in the regional offices.
Numerical weather prediction is performed using the Unified Model software. The Bureau of Meteorology announced the Cray contract in July 2015, commissioned the Cray XC40 supercomputer on 30 June 2016 and decommissioned their Oracle HPC system in October 2016.