Chris Daly is the founder and director of the PRISM Group, a unique group dedicated to producing the highest-quality spatial climate data sets and analyses worldwide. The PRISM group is developing an emerging sub-discipline of climatology called “geospatial climatology,” which is a powerful combination of climatology and spatial analysis. Chris is the developer of the PRISM spatial climate modeling system, which produces state-of-the-science spatial climate products currently used in thousands of applications worldwide. Spatial data sets include official USDA temperature and precipitation maps for the United States and possessions, the US climate atlas, detailed climate maps for China/Mongolia and the European Alps, and a century-long monthly time series of digital maps of temperature, precipitation, and dew point for the US spanning 1895-present. For his efforts in developing PRISM spatial climate data sets for users worldwide, Chris received the 2004 Applied Meteorology Award from the American Meteorological Society, the highest award in his discipline.

Education

B.S., Atmospheric Sciences, University of California at Davis, 1978
M.A., Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1984
Ph.D., General Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, 1994