John Christy

John Raymond Christy
Born	California, USA
Nationality	American
Fields	Atmospheric Science
Institutions	University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH)
Alma mater	University of Illinois
Thesis	An investigation of the general circulation associated with extreme anomalies in hemispheric mean atmospheric mass (1987)
Doctoral advisor	Kevin Trenberth
Known for	UAH satellite data
Notable awards	1991 Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, NASA; 1996 Special Award, American Meteorological Society
Spouse	Babs (Joslin) Christy, 1975. Died 2014. Sherry (Upshaw) Christy, 2015
Website nsstc.uah.edu/users/john.christy/

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.

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 B.A. in Mathematics from California State University, Fresno in 1973, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Illinois 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.

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