Soukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Paris win the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to scientists from Japan, Germany and Italy. 90-year-old Soukuro Manabe and 89-year-old Klaus Hasselmann were cited for their work in “physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming”.
The second part of the prize was given to 73-year-old Giorgio Paris for his “discovery of the interaction of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”.
The panel said Manabe and Hasselman “laid the foundation for our knowledge of Earth’s climate and how humanity affects it.
In the early 1960s, Manabe demonstrated how increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase global temperatures, laying the foundation for current climate models.
Nearly a decade later, Hasselman created a model that links weather and climate, helping to explain why climate models can be reliable despite the seemingly chaotic nature of weather.
They also developed ways to look for specific signs of human impact on the climate.
Paris “created a profound physical and mathematical model” that made it possible to understand complex systems in fields such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience, and machine learning.
Following the announcement, Paris said “it is very important that we make very strong decisions and move very quickly” to tackle climate change.
“It is clear to future generations that we have to act now,” he said.
The winners were announced on Tuesday by Goran Hansson, Secretary-General of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
It is common for many scientists working in related fields to share the award.
The coveted prize comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million). The prize money comes from a will left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.
On Monday, the Nobel committee awarded the Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Americans David Julius and Ardame Patapoutian for their discoveries about how the human body perceives temperature and touch.
In the coming days, awards will also be given for outstanding work in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace and economics.
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