Trio win physics Nobel for work deciphering chaotic climate

Japanese-born American Syukuro Manabe, German Klaus Hasselmann and Italian Giorgio Parisi won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for work that helps understand complex physical systems such as Earth’s changing climate.

In a decision hailed by the U.N. weather agency as a sign of a consensus forming around man-made global warming, one half of the 10-million Swedish crown ($1.15 million) prize goes in equal parts to Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, for modelling earth’s climate and reliably predicting global warming.

The other half goes to Parisi for discovering in the early 1980s “hidden rules” behind seemingly random movements and swirls in gases or liquids that can also be applied to aspects of neuroscience, machine learning and starling flight formations.

“Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. “Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes.”

Hasselmann, who is at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, told Reuters from his home that he did not want to wake up from what he described as a beautiful dream.

“I am retired, you know, and have been a bit lazy lately. I am happy about the honour. The research continues,” he said.

The Academy said Manabe, who works at Princeton University in the United States, had laid the foundation in the 1960s for today’s understanding of Earth’s climate after moving to the United States from Japan to continue his research.

Interviewed by U.S. and Japanese journalists at his home, Manabe said he believed his award reflected the Academy’s recognition of climate change, which he said will continue to intensify with more droughts, torrential rains, warming of land masses and melting of polar ice.

“Already, as you know, there are many phenomena showing climate change is happening,” he said in Japanese. “And I think that is the reason why the theme of climate change was selected for the award this time.”

Asked in English how he would address climate change sceptics, he smiled and replied, “That problem is about a million times more difficult than understanding climate change. It is very mysterious to me.”

Hasselmann, the Academy said, had developed models about 10 years later that became instrumental in proving that mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions cause rising temperatures in the atmosphere.