The climate crisis currently seems more present than ever – but researchers have been warning against global warming for decades. Three of them will now be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Stockholm / Hamburg – A few weeks before the World Climate Conference in Glasgow, a German meteorologist and two other scientists will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contributions to research into the climate and other complex systems.
Klaus Hasselmann shares half of the prize with the Japanese-born American Syukuro Manabe, the other half goes to the Italian Giorgio Parisi. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday in Stockholm that their work has made a decisive contribution to the understanding of complex physical systems such as the climate.
Hasselmann, born in Hamburg in 1931, is the founding director of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Meteorology there and still works at the institute. A model he developed in the 1970s made it clear that climate models could be reliable even though the weather itself behaved chaotically, writes the Nobel Committee. He also developed methods that made it possible to detect traces of human activities in the climate and to differentiate these from natural effects.
Manabe’s work is the basis for climate models
Manabe, also born in Japan in 1931, conducts research at Princeton University in the USA. Among other things, he has shown that an increased carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere leads to an increase in the temperature on the earth’s surface, explains the committee. His work was fundamental to the development of current climate models.
The third winner, the physicist Giorgio Parisi, was born in Rome in 1948 and conducts research at the Sapienza University there. He examines hidden patterns in apparently disordered systems and works on their mathematical description – initially, for example, on the behavior of iron atoms in a network of copper atoms. His discoveries “enable the understanding and description of many different and seemingly completely random materials and phenomena, not only in physics but also in other very different areas such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning,” according to the committee.
Manabe and Hasselmann, in the spirit of Alfred Nobel, would have contributed to the greatest benefit for mankind by creating a solid physical basis for our knowledge of the earth’s climate, the committee explains its decision. “We can no longer say that we did not know – the climate models are clear. Is the earth warming up? Yes. Is this caused by the increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? Yes. Can this be explained by natural factors alone? No. Are human emissions causing the temperature rise? Yes.”
Crucial contributions
“If they hadn’t existed, we wouldn’t be that far on climate protection today,” said climate researcher Mojib Latif from the Geomar Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel, who was a doctoral student at Hasselmann. However, public awareness of the climate does not mean that we are doing enough. “They laid the foundations for climate change to be taken up by politicians.”
Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research shares this assessment. “He gave us the foundations for science-based politics. Hasselmann is one of the most important climate researchers in the world. “
The Hamburg MPI for Meteorology reacted with a storm of smileys to the announcement of “its” award winner Hasselmann. “We are speechless”, tweeted the institute.
While climate change has only been noticed by the wider public in recent years, Hasselmann pointed out the threatening consequences decades ago. Only with “draconian measures” to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions could the global rise in temperature and the changes associated with it be avoided, the scientist said at an event around 1992.
Something could be done about climate change
“We have been warning about climate change for about 50 years,” said Hasselmann to a representative of the Nobel organizers. Something can be done about it. One of the big problems is that you have to react today to something that will happen in 20 to 30 years. Hasselmann, who was called to the phone by his wife with “Klaus, are you coming?” Stated that he was “completely surprised” by the award. “That was absolutely like a bolt from the blue.”
“I was reading the newspaper and then this call came. I thought I was dreaming, “said Hasselmann of the German press agency. At the end of the 1970s, he asked himself, “Can you really prove that humans have already changed the climate or are these natural climatic fluctuations?” He provided proof with his models. He is happy about the young people at Fridays for Future. “You have found a way to address the public that we as scientists have not found.” He is still optimistic. “I hope that we can gradually get away from greenhouse gases and come to natural forms of energy generation without too great a disadvantage for the economy.”
Federal President congratulates
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier congratulated Hasselmann and at the same time warned: “Your findings show us that we humans are accelerating climate change – and that we humans have to stop it.”
“Without Mr. Hasselmann’s work, the Paris Climate Agreement could never have existed,” said the current director of the MPI for Meteorology, Jochem Marotzke.
Colleagues praised Hasselmann’s commitment to the next generation of scientists. “Hasselmann is an exceptional scientist who never let that hang out. He was always down to earth. He encouraged young people like me, ”said Latif. Johanna Baehr from the Institute for Oceanography at the University of Hamburg also attested to the 89-year-old being “unbelievable curiosity and openness”.
The most important award for physicists this year is endowed with a total of ten million crowns (around 980,000 euros). A German also received the award last year. Reinhard Genzel was involved in the discovery of the supermassive black hole in the center of our Milky Way.
On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to David Julius (USA) and the Lebanon-born researcher Ardem Patapoutian for work on the senses of temperature and touch. The winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be announced on Wednesday. The announcements for the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize will follow on Thursday and Friday. The round ends next Monday with the Nobel Prize for Economics donated by the Swedish Reichsbank.
The ceremonial presentation of the awards traditionally takes place on December 10th, the anniversary of the death of the prize donor Alfred Nobel. dpa
