Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi have been honored with the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics “for their innovative contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.”
Climate scientists, Manahe and Hasselmann have been awarded for “the physical modeling of the Earth’s climate , quantifying the variability and certainty in the prediction of global warming.”
Parisi, recognized for his work in statistical mechanics, has been distinguished for “the discovery of the interaction of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from the atomic to the planetary scale.”
The ruling has been announced this October 5 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Complex systems are characterized by randomness and disorder and are difficult to understand. A complex system of vital importance for humanity is the Earth’s climate, according to the Swedish Academy of Sciences in a statement after the award’s ruling.
Climate change models
Syukuro Manabe demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures on the Earth’s surface. In the 1960s, he led the development of physical models of the Earth’s climate and was the first person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and vertical transport of air masses. His work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.
About ten years later, Klaus Hasselmann created a model that links weather and climate, thus answering the question of why climate models can be reliable even though the climate is changeable and chaotic. He also developed methods to identify specific signals, fingerprints, that both natural phenomena and human activities imprint on the climate. Their methods have been used to show that the increase in temperature in the atmosphere is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide.
For his part, around 1980, Giorgio Parisi discovered hidden patterns in messy complex materials. His discoveries are among the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems. They make it possible to understand and describe 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, depending on the failure.
‘The discoveries that are being recognized this year show that our knowledge of climate rests on a sound scientific basis, based on rigorous analysis of observations. All of this year’s awardees have helped us gain a deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems, ”says Thors Hans Hansson, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics.
