Scientists who Discovered Hidden Climate Patterns Awarded Nobel Prize in Physics

Giorgio Parisi, Klaus Hasselmann, and Syukuro Manabe made a monumental contribution to understanding our planet's complex systems.

FREMONT, CA: A trio from the US, Germany, and Italy were awarded the Nobel Prize 2021 in Physics for their revolutionary contributions to understanding our plant's complex systems. Complex systems are often characterized by disorder and randomness and are critically difficult to comprehend. The trio discovered new techniques for defining them and predicting their long-term behaviors. Giorgio Parisi, an alumnus of the Sapienza University of Rome, Klaus Hasselmann of Hamburg’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and  Syukuro Manabe of Princeton University, discovered hidden patterns in the climate and other intricate phenomena. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann were jointly awarded half of the prize for physically modeling our planet's climate, quantifying variability, and developing reliable prediction global heating models. The other half of the prize was awarded to Giogio Parisi for discovering the disorder and fluctuations in systems from atomic to planetary scale.

Syukuro Manabe is currently working as a senior meteorologist at Princeton University. Back in the 1960s, he developed physical models to demonstrate how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused an increase in surface temperature. Manabe's work has laid the foundation to several popular climate models that are used today. Klaus Hasselmann linked Manabe's model to weather and climate. He identified the impact of natural processes and human activities on climate and demonstrated how climate models could be accurate despite the unpredictable nature of the weather. On the other hand, Giorgio Parisi made discoveries in the field of disordered complex materials that significantly enhanced the theory of complex systems. His work benefitted several domains, such as maths, neuroscience, machine learning, and biology.

The contribution by the three scientists were recognized to highlight that the concerns raised by several global communities were based on scientific studies and foundations.