2021 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 on October 5 was awarded to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.” The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday announced its decision to award the Nobel Prize in two halves with one half being jointly awarded to Manabe and Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.” Meanwhile, the other half is given to Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

In the official release, the award committee said that the three Nobel laureates who are sharing the prize this year have conducted groundbreaking studies of both “chaotic” and “random” phenomena. While Manabe and Hasselmann laid the foundation for information about Earth's climate and humanity’s influence on the same, Parisi is rewarded for his stunning contributions to the theory of disordered materials and “random processes.” 

The Swedish academy noted that, “Complex systems are characterised by randomness and disorder and are difficult to understand. This year’s Prize recognises new methods for describing them and predicting their long-term behaviour.”

In the official statement, the chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, Thors Hans Hansson noted that the discoveries by the laureates rest on a “solid scientific foundation.” Hansson said, “The discoveries being recognised this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on rigorous analysis of observations. This year’s Laureates have all contributed to us gaining deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems.”

What are the discoveries by the laureates?

The Nobel Prize academy noted that Manabe’s discovered the complex system for the importance of humankind to the Earth’s climate. The laureate demonstrated “how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth. In the 1960s, he led the development of physical models of the Earth’s climate and was the first person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and the vertical transport of air masses. His work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.”

Additionally, a decade after Manabe’s discovery, Hasselmann created a model that connects the weather to the climate. With this, Hasselmann answered the question of why climate models can be “reliable despite the weather being changeable and chaotic.” This was followed by Parisi, around 1980 discovering the hidden patterns in the disordered complex materials. Of his discoveries, the Swedish academy said that Parisi’s findings “are among the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems.”

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