Roy W. Spencer

Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D., is Principal Research Scientist in Climatology in the University of Alabama’s National Space Science & Technology Center. When he worked at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, he and Dr. John Christy, who heads the NSSTC, jointly received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Dr. Spencer’s research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE. He has never been asked by any oil company to perform any kind of service. He is a Senior Fellow of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Unnecessary Net Zero, Part II: A Demonstration with Global Carbon Project Data

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Some commenters on my previous blog post, Net Zero CO2 Emissions: A Damaging and Totally Unnecessary Goal, were dubious of my claim that nature will continue to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at about the same rate even if anthropogenic emissions decrease…or even if they were suddenly eliminated. Rather than appeal to the simple CO2 budget […]

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Net Zero CO2 Emissions: A Damaging and Totally Unnecessary Goal

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The goal of reaching “Net Zero” global anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide sounds overwhelmingly difficult. While humanity continues producing CO2 at increasing rates (with a temporary pause during COVID), how can we ever reach the point where these emissions start to fall, let alone reach zero by 2050 or 2060? What isn’t being discussed (as

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Spencer vs. Schmidt: My Response to RealClimate.org Criticisms

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EN: Dr. Roy Spencer serves thoughtfully on the Cornwall Alliance Board. What follows is a response to Gavin Schmidt’s blog post at RealClimate.org entitled Spencer’s Shenanigans in which he takes issue with my claims in Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models. As I read through his criticism, he seems to be trying too hard to refute my claims

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‘Demographic Warming’: Humans Increasingly Choose to Live Where It’s Warmer

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This is the second of a series of articles in which Cornwall Alliance board member and senior fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer explains the importance of distinguishing urban heat island effect from global temperature increase and of recognizing that by choosing to live in warmer regions of the world and in cities rather than in

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A New Global Urban Heat Island Dataset: Global Grids of the Urban Heat Island Effect on Air Temperature, 1800-2023

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This is the second of a series of articles in which Cornwall Alliance board member and senior fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer explains the importance of distinguishing urban heat island effect from global temperature increase and of recognizing that by choosing to live in warmer regions of the world and in cities rather than in

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New paper submission: Urban heat island effects in U.S. summer temperatures, 1880-2015

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This is the first of a series of articles in which Cornwall Alliance board member and senior fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer explains the importance of distinguishing urban heat island effect from global temperature increase and of recognizing that by choosing to live in warmer regions of the world and in cities rather than in

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SITYS: Climate Models Do Not Conserve Mass or Energy

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One of the most fundamental requirements of any physics-based model of climate change is that it must conserve mass and energy. This is partly why I (along with Danny Braswell and John Christy) have been using simple 1-dimensional climate models that have simplified calculations and where conservation is not a problem. Changes in the global

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UAH Global Temperature Update for July, 2023: +0.64 deg. C

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New Record High Temperatures and a Weird Month July 2023 was an unusual month, with sudden warmth and a few record or near-record high temperatures. Image: Creative Commons under Unsplash Since the satellite record began in 1979, July 2023 was: These results suggest something peculiar is going on. It’s too early for the developing El

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UAH Global Temperature Update for June, 2023: +0.38 deg. C

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The Version 6 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for June 2023 was +0.38 deg. C departure from the 1991-2020 mean. This is statistically unchanged from the May 2023 anomaly of +0.37 deg. C. The linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.13 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade

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