Dr. Spencer received his B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from University of Michigan in 1978, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Meteorology from University of Wisconsin, in 1980 and 1982. He then continued at the U. of Wisconsin through 1984 in the Space Science and Engineering Center as a research scientist. In his current position at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Dr. Spencer serves as Principal Investigator on the Global Precipitation Studies with Nimbus-7 and DMSP SSM/I, and the Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer High Altitude Studies of Precipitation Systems. He has been a member of several teams: the TRMM Space Station Accommodations Analysis Study Team, Science Steering Group for the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), TOVS Pathfinder Working Group, and NASA HQ Earth Science and Applications Advisory Subcommittee.

Since 1992 Dr. Spencer has been the U.S. Team Leader for the Multichannel Imaging Microwave Radiometer (MIMR) team. Some of his notable accomplishments are: development of a method for monitoring oceanic rainfall from TIROS-N Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) 50.3 GHz data, calibrated with ten years of rain gauge data (1992), development of a satellite-based method for precisely monitoring global scale tropospheric and stratospheric temperature fluctuations from NOAA satellite data to a precision of 0.01°C/month (1990), development of a scattering-based precipitation algorithm for use over land or ocean with DMSP SSM/I 85.5 GHz data (1989), and development of the first technique demonstrating the ability of high frequency passive microwave satellite observations for qualitatively measuring precipitation over land (1983).

He is the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal, 1991, the MSFC Center Director's Commendation in 1989 and the American Meteorological Society's Special Award in 1996.