The Nobel Prize for Physics in Physics honors the work of scientists on complex systems and climate change
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This year, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for work in finding order in chaos. It was won by both humans and nature.
Klaus Hasselmann and Syukuro Hasselmann each received half of the prize for their research on how humans are changing the climate. The prize committee stated that Manabe, now at Princeton University was the one who created the climate model in 1960 that showed how carbon dioxide from humans could heat the planet.
Goran K. Hansson (secretary general of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) stated, "It's an physics prize and we are saying that the modeling of climate is solidly grounded in physical theory"
Hasselmann, of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, continued his work a decade later. He showed that computer simulations like Manabe's were able to predict the climate's course even though the weather is unpredictable for more than a week in the future. The chaos and noise of daily weather data led him to discover how humans could influence the climate.
Giorgio Parisi, Sapienza University Rome, was awarded the second half of the prize for his work on a smaller scale than the Earth. Parisi studies materials in which metals such as iron and copper are combined. Parisi discovered hidden patterns in iron atoms. These patterns can be used in many other areas of science, such as neuroscience and machine learning.
Parisi stated that she was not expecting to win, but knew there was a non-negligible chance. Parisi spoke by phone as part of the prize announcement.
The newly-minted laureate answered the question, "I think it is urgent." "It is clear that we must act quickly now for the future generations."
