Rate My Professor Christopher Merchant

Professor Christopher Merchant is the Professor in Ocean and Earth Observation in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. He holds a BA in Physics from Oxford University and a PhD in Space and Climate Physics from University College London. Prior to joining the University of Reading on 1 May 2013 as part of the University's Academic Investment Project, he was based in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. Merchant leads an active research group focused on thermal remote sensing of sea surface temperature and serves as the lead for the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative project on sea surface temperature. His work emphasizes Earth observation for climate science, including the theory and practice of creating climate data records.

Merchant's academic interests include oceans and climate change, climate data records derived from Earth observation, temperature measurements across all of Earth's surfaces, and public understanding of climate change and net zero. His research group has an international reputation for deriving sensitive measurements of Earth's changing climate from satellite images, contributing evidence on global surface temperature change rates and testing climate models. Notable publications encompass 'Quantifying the acceleration of multidecadal global sea surface warming driven by Earth’s energy imbalance' (Environmental Research Letters, 2025, with R. P. Allan and O. Embury), 'Reconciling Earth’s growing energy imbalance with ocean warming' (Environmental Research Letters, 2025, with R. P. Allan), 'Stability specifications for climate data records: their meaning and application in evaluating geophysical trend uncertainty' (Surveys in Geophysics, 2026), 'A unified framework for trend uncertainty assessment in climate data records: demonstration on global mean sea level' (Surveys in Geophysics, 2026), 'Optimal estimation of sea surface temperature from split-window observations' (Remote Sensing of Environment, 2008, with P. Le Borgne et al.), and 'The Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature Pilot Project (GHRSST-PP)' (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2007, multi-author). These contributions advance understanding of marine climate change and satellite-based climate monitoring.