It’s Wednesday, October 6, and the physicists who first explained climate change won a Nobel Prize.
On Tuesday, the physicists Syukuro Manabe, from Japan, German-native Klaus Hasselmann, and Giorgio Parisi, of Italy, won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking contributions to understanding complex physical systems — including modelling Earth’s climate and predicting global warming, in the case of Manabe and Hasselman.
In 1967, Manabe published a paper that came to be considered the most influential climate change study of all time. In it, Manabe and his co-author Richard T. Wetherald created the first computer model demonstrating the exact ways that carbon dioxide increases global temperatures. Manabe also projected the complex ways in which increasing quantities of the gas trapped in the atmosphere could unleash a series of catastrophic events on Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, and lands.
Hasselmann’s work was the first to explain how, though weather is variable and seemingly chaotic, climate models can accurately predict future weather. He also deciphered the clues that allow climate scientists to link human activities with increased levels of carbon emissions.
The Italian Parisi also won the prize for his work uncovering “hidden patterns in disordered complex materials” in the early 1980s. His work has advanced the understanding of the theoretical physics at play in complex systems like Earth’s climate.
After receiving the award, both Manabe and Parisi urged action against climate change. Hasselman told the AP that he’d “rather have no global warming and no Nobel Prize.”
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