Nobel Prize in Physics to two climatologists and Italian theorist

© Jonathan NACKSTRAND
Japanese-American scientist Syukuro Manabe, German Klaus Hasselmann and Italian Giorgio Parisi won the Nobel Prize in physics

Japanese-American scientist Syukuro Manabe, German Klaus Hasselmann and Italy’s Giorgio Parisi on Tuesday won the Nobel Prize in Physics for climate models and understanding of physical systems, the jury said.

The announcement came a month before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, where global warming will be high on the global agenda.

Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, share half the price of 10 million crowns ($ 1.1 million, one million euros) for their climate model research, while Parisi, 73 , won the other half for his work. on the interaction of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems.

© Sophie RAMIS
2021 Nobel Prize in Physics

“Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation for our knowledge of Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it,” the Nobel committee said in a statement.

© Viken KANTARCI
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announces the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Syukuro Manabe from the United States and Japan, Klaus Hasselmann from Germany, and Giorgio Parisi have been recognized for their research on climate models and their understanding of physical systems. “Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation for our knowledge of Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it. Giorgio Parisi is recognized for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes, ”said the jury.

“Giorgio Parisi is recognized for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes,” he added.

“The findings recognized this year demonstrate that our knowledge of climate has a solid scientific basis, based on rigorous analysis of observations,” Thors Hans Hansson, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in a statement.

Manabe is affiliated with Princeton University in the United States, while Hasselmann is a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg.

Parisi is a professor at La Sapienza University in Rome.

– Climate models –

Working in the 1960s, Manabe showed how the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere corresponded to the increase in Earth’s surface temperatures.

He played an important role in the development of physical models of Earth’s climate and worked on how thermal energy received by Earth from the Sun is returned to the atmosphere.

Hasselmann has been credited with discovering how climate models can remain reliable despite sometimes chaotic variations in weather patterns.

The Committee welcomed his identification of climate “fingerprints” caused by natural and human activities and how climate change can be contributed only to human-made emissions.

Parisi, who was awarded separately, was highlighted for his work in the 1980s which was called by the Committee “among the most important contributions” to the theory of complex systems.

His work has enabled physicists to understand seemingly entirely random materials, with many applications including mathematics, biology, and machine learning.

Over the past two years, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has honored discoveries in the field of astronomy, leading observers to speculate that it was due to a change in field.

In 2019, Canadian-American researcher James Peebles won the Prize for Discoveries Explaining the Evolution of the Universe after the Big Bang, along with Switzerland’s Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for the first discovery of an exoplanet.

This was followed in 2020 for work on black holes, with Briton Roger Penrose, German Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez from the United States honored.

– Prize giving canceled –

The prestigious honor is the second Nobel Prize of the season after the Medicine Prize was awarded on Monday to an American duo David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for discoveries on temperature and touch receptors.

The Nobel season continues on Wednesday with the Chemistry Prize, followed by the much-anticipated Literature Prize on Thursday and Peace Prize on Friday before the Economics Prize ends on Monday, October 11.

While the names of the Nobel laureates are kept secret until the last minute, the Nobel Foundation has already announced that the scintillating awards ceremony and banquet held in Stockholm in December for the science and literature laureates do will not take place this year due to the pandemic.

Like last year, the winners will receive their prizes in their country of origin.

A decision has yet to be made on the lavish Peace Prize ceremony held in Oslo on the same day.

bur-jll / po / spm