Three scientists awarded Physics Nobel for groundbreaking climate work
Copenhagen, Oct 5 (EFE).- Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for their “groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems,” the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm announced on Tuesday.
Complex systems such as the Earth’s climate, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences explained, are characterized by randomness and disorder and are difficult to understand, with this year’s prize recognizing new methods to describe them and predicting their long-term behavior.
“The discoveries being recognized this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations,” Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics said at the press conference to present the award.
Half the prize money of 10 million krona ($1.14 million) goes jointly to Manabe and Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”, while the other half goes to Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.” EFE
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