Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for modeling complex systems

(Nobel Prize)

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 was awarded to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for physically modeling the Earth's climate.

The prize was also shared with Giorgio Parisi for discovering the interaction between disorder and fluctuations in physical systems.

The awards will be presented on December 10. Traditionally, the awards were held at an official ceremony in Stockholm, but due to the pandemic, this year it will be held online.

The first half of the award will be shared by Shukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselman. “For physical modeling of the Earth's climate, quantitative description of climate change and prediction of global warming.”

Manabe was the first scientist to link the balance of downward and upward radiation in the atmosphere with vertical transport of air masses and showed why an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can lead to an increase in its temperature.

It was these works of the 1960s that formed the basis for modern climate models.

Hasselman built physical models that relate weather and climate.

He also developed metrics by which it is possible to determine the influence of natural and anthropogenic factors (in particular, changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide) on changes in the global climate.

The second half of the prize will go to Giorgio Parisi. “For the discovery of the interaction between disorder and fluctuations in physical systems - from atomic to planetary scales.”

The Nobel Committee noted his work, where the physicist investigated the patterns that can be found in disordered materials.

The patterns discovered by Parisi are suitable not only for describing complex materials with a disordered structure, but also for other complex systems - not only physical.

The patterns are also related to mathematics, biology, or machine learning.

This year, for the first time, a citation-based forecast by Clarivate Analytics, which named Parisi as one of the top three candidates for the physics award, came true.

Before that, Clarivate Analytics already had successful forecasts, but they did not come true in the same year.

Source:

• Nobelprize.org: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/press-release/

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