In August 1905, federal home affairs minister Littleton Groom surveyed state governments for their willingness to cede control, finding South Australia and Victoria unwilling.

Groom rejected a takeover of astronomy due to its connection to universities, which relied on state legislation for their authority.

Initially, the Bureau had few staff and issued a single daily forecast for each state, transmitted by Morse code to country areas.

[11] The Bureau of Meteorology is the main provider of weather forecasts, warnings and observations to the Australian public.

[citation needed] The Bureau of Meteorology has been accused of being influenced by oil and gas giants such as Santos, Chevron and Woodside to downplay the effects of climate change to “please their leaders”.

Sentences in the Bureau's report on the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season were censored and/or modified to remove references to climate change and long-term warming trends.

In April 2020, the Bureau received Australis II, a 4.0 petaflop Cray XC50 and CS500 system, which was expected to be operational in August 2024 after several lengthy delays[23][needs update].

2 years later, the Bureau bought a disaster recovery (DR) HPC system to improve the resilience of the supercomputer used to predict Australia’s weather events.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise will supply the DR HPC system under a three-year contract worth $49.3 million, supplementing the existing Australis II.