John Raymond Christy is a climate scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) whose chief interests are satellite remote sensing of global climate and global climate change. He is best known, jointly with Roy Spencer, for the first successful development of a satellite temperature record. Early life and education A native of Fresno, California, Christy became interested in the weather when he was a child. He became curious why the weather in the San Joaquin Valley was so different from that of the Sierra Mountains. He has recalled that "I built my first climate datasets when I was 12, using a mechanical pencil, graph paper, and long-division (no calculators back then.) I've been a climate nerd ever since." He received a BA in Mathematics from California State University, Fresno in 1973, and an MS and PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1984 and 1987. His doctoral thesis was titled, An investigation of the general circulation associated with extreme anomalies in hemispheric mean atmospheric mass. Prior to his scientific career, Christy taught physics and chemistry as a missionary teacher in Nyeri, Kenya from 1973 to 1975. After earning a Master of Divinity degree from Golden Gate Baptist Seminary in 1978 he served four years as a bivocational mission-pastor in Vermillion, South Dakota, where he also taught college math. Career He is the Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He was appointed Alabama's state climatologist in 2000. For his development of a global temperature data set from satellites, he was awarded NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and the American Meteorological Society's "Special Award." In 2002, Christy was elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. Satellite temperature record Since 1989 Christy, along with Roy Spencer, has maintained an atmospheric temperature record derived from satellite microwave sounding unit measurements (see: satellite temperature record). This was once quite controversial: From the beginning of the satellite record in late 1978 into 1998 it showed a net global cooling trend, although ground measurements and instruments carried aloft by balloons showed warming in many areas. Part of the cooling trend seen by the satellites can be attributed to several years of cooler than normal temperatures and cooling caused by the eruption of the Mount Pinatubo volcano. Part of the discrepancy between the surface and