The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists for their study of climate change and complex systems.
The nobel prize global physics awarded scientists is a Nobel Prize in Physics that was awarded to three scientists for their study of climate change and complex systems.
On Tuesday, an international group of scientists received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering new methods to find order in chaos, setting the groundwork for computer models that study how human activity affects global climate.
Giorgio Parisi of Italy’s Sapienza University of Rome received half of the prize for his finding of patterns in the interaction of order and chaos on sizes ranging from molecules to whole planets. According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, who announced the yearly award, his work allows scientists to explain apparently random events in fields ranging from physics to neurology to machine learning.
When the Nobel committee phoned early Tuesday, Dr. Parisi had his phone near by. “I wasn’t anticipating it in some ways, but I knew there was a possibility, so I kept the phone close by,” he added. “I was overjoyed.”
Syukuro Manabe, a senior meteorologist at Princeton University, and Klaus Hasselmann, of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, received the other half of the award for their independent work on climate modeling.
The prize honors both theory and practice when taken together.
The three Nobel Laureates in Physics for 2021 were revealed on Tuesday at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images/jonathan Nackstrand
“You fear you’ll drown in complexity, but this research can demonstrate that simplicity can emerge and you can get insight into the actual behavior of these complicated systems,” said Princeton physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf. “It’s hard to imagine anything more complicated than the world’s climate.”
Dr. Manabe’s study, which dates back to the 1960s, showed how increasing carbon dioxide levels may lead to higher temperatures on the Earth’s surface, providing the groundwork for today’s climate models.
Suki is responsible for the whole field of climate modeling, according to Gabriel Vecchi, deputy director of Princeton’s Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System. “He was the one who came up with the concept of coding the equations that control something as complicated as the climate system, putting them in a computer, and using that to mimic the climate system.”
Dr. Hasselmann of Hamburg developed a model that linked weather and climate in the 1970s, removing doubt about climate model dependability despite unpredictable and variable weather, according to the academy. His research, which includes techniques for attribution of the different effects on climate caused by both human activity and natural events, has been used to demonstrate how human carbon-dioxide emissions may cause temperature rises.
When the Nobel authorities phoned, Dr. Hasselman said, “I’m totally shocked… a bolt from the blue.” He said, “I came to climate as a physicist.” “It is difficult for someone who is not directly involved in climate change to realize that we are altering climate until it is very obvious.”
Since preindustrial times, most scientists have agreed that greenhouse-gas emissions from human activities, such as burning coal for electricity, have contributed to a warming climate. The decision to recognize Messrs. Manabe and Hasselmann, both originally from Japan, came little over a month before a United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences in New York, a major center for global climate modeling, said, “I’m extremely pleased that climate is even on their radar.” “This isn’t the Nobel Prize committee’s typical fare. It is amazing that they are aware of the subject.”
Since its inception in 1901, the physics prize has been given to 218 individuals for discoveries in areas ranging from black holes to gravitational waves. It’s the third time a Nobel Prize has been given for studies on the effects of human activities on the global climate. The prize includes a monetary reward of 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.15 million).
Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, and F. Sherwood Rowland received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 for identifying how industrial chemicals harm the Earth’s protective ozone layer, which aided in the development of an international convention prohibiting the substances. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations and former US Vice President Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for their efforts to bring climate change to the world’s notice.
“Climate science in general has been difficult to acquire widespread recognition and respect in the scientific community,” said Sylvester James Gates Jr., a physicist at Brown University and president of the American Physical Society. “This is physics on a large scale for the benefit of humanity.”
Robert Lee Hotz and Benjamin Katz may be reached at [email protected] and [email protected], respectively.
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The nobel global warming physics to scientists is a Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to Trio for Study of Climate Change, Complex Systems.
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