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.

Canadian Summer Urban Heat Island Effects: Some Results in Alberta

Summary Comparison of rural with urban temperature monitoring sites across Canada during the summers of 1978-2022 shows the expected average nighttime warm bias in urban areas, with a weaker daytime effect. When applied to the Landsat imagery-based diagnoses of increased urbanization over time, 20% of the temperature trends in a small region encompassing Calgary and […]

Canadian Summer Urban Heat Island Effects: Some Results in Alberta Learn More »

50-Year U.S. Summer Temperature Trends: ALL 36 Climate Models Are Too Warm

I’ll get right to the results, which are pretty straightforward. As seen in the accompanying plot, 50-year (1973-2022) summer (June/July/August) temperature trends for the contiguous 48 U.S. states from 36 CMIP-6 climate model experiments average nearly twice the warming rate as observed by the NOAA climate division dataset. The 36 models are those cataloged at

50-Year U.S. Summer Temperature Trends: ALL 36 Climate Models Are Too Warm Learn More »

De-Urbanization of Surface Temperatures with the Landsat-Based “Built-Up” Dataset

A relatively new global dataset of urbanization changes over the 40-year period 1975-2014 based upon Landsat data is used to determine the average effect urbanization has had on surface temperatures. A method is presented to compute the magnitude of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect on temperatures using the example of summertime 09 UTC (early morning) Integrated

De-Urbanization of Surface Temperatures with the Landsat-Based “Built-Up” Dataset Learn More »

Are High Energy Prices a “Bug” in the Biden Administration?

High gasoline prices are not a “bug” in the view of the Biden Administration, but a “feature.” Environmentalists with enough money to pay the premium are giddy because high prices make expensive wind and solar energy more competitive. So, forget about the days when the most cost-saving ideas win in the marketplace, we are now

Are High Energy Prices a “Bug” in the Biden Administration? Learn More »

More Snow Hits the Fan this Week: Climate Change Alarmists Still Want it Both Ways

As I predicted, climate change has been blamed for the recent New England blizzard (e.g. from Bloomberg here). During that storm, Boston tied its 24-hr snowfall record at 23.6 inches. Yet, as recently as January 6, we were told by USAToday that Boston’s lengthy 316-day streak *without* one inch of snowfall as of January 1st was caused by global

More Snow Hits the Fan this Week: Climate Change Alarmists Still Want it Both Ways Learn More »

UAH Global Temperature Update for January 2022: +0.03 deg. C.

The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for January 2022 was +0.03 deg. C, down from the December 2021 value of +0.21 deg. C. The linear warming trend since January 1979 now stands at +0.13 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land). Various regional LT departures

UAH Global Temperature Update for January 2022: +0.03 deg. C. Learn More »