Météo-France, a public administration placed under the authority of the Ministry of Transport, employs 3700 salaried staff. Its basic structure remaining unchanged, its budget in 2002 amounted to 266.4 million euros, 55 % of which came from State subsidies, 26 % from air navigation dues and 19 % from commercial and
other revenues. Moreover, Météo-France contributes 36.6 million euros a year to Eumetsat, the European organisation of meteorological satellites, mainly from its research budget.

Within Météo-France, the National Centre for Meteorological Research (CNRM) is the department responsible for conducting the largest part of the meteorological research activities, and for coordinating research/development undertakings conducted within other departments. Primarily oriented towards the needs of public utility in the domain of meteorology, the research actions encompass the atmosphere, extending to, and including, closely related fields and boundaries, such as stratospheric ozone chemistry, upper ocean, physics and dynamics of the snow cover, surface hydrology, ...

To carry out its missions, CNRM hosts approximately 225 permanent positions (one-third being research scientists), and 45 students and visitors, working in specialized divisions:

• the numerical weather prediction group GMAP (dynamics, physical      parameterizations and data assimilation techniques);
• the mesoscale group GMME (study and modelling of boundary layer processes, land-surface fluxes, convection, clouds,...);
• the climate group GMGEC (physical processes for climate, ozone, long-range forecasting, climate evolution, development and management of the atmospheric part of the French community climate model,...);
• the experimental and instrumental group GMEI (development of new instrumentation systems, field experiments, water channel,...);
• the snow centre CEN (study of snow mantle, techniques and methodologies associated with the forecasting of avalanches) ;
• the meteorological airplanes centre CAM (two airplanes equipped with instruments for atmospheric research) ;
• the marine meteorology centre CMM (development and implementation of oceanic and meteorological buoys for the study of air-sea interactions) ;
• the knowledge transfer unit RETIC (aimed at facilitating the spreading of research results within operational departments of Météo-France).