Oct. 5 (UPI) — Three scientists from Japan, Germany and Italy were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for their work in modeling the Earth’s climate and predicting global warming.
The award was given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi.
Manabe of Princeton University and Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, won half of the prize, and Parisi, of the Sapienza University of Rome, won the other half for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.
“The discoveries being recognized this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations,” Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in a statement.
“This year’s laureates have all contributed to us gaining deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems.”
Manabe demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth. He was the first person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and the vertical transport of air masses.
Hasselmann created a model that links together weather and climate, answering the question of why climate models can be reliable despite weather being changeable and chaotic. His methods have been used to prove that the increased temperature in the atmosphere is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide.
Parisi discovered hidden patterns in disordered complex materials around 1980. His discoveries are among the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems. His findings make it possible to understand and describe different and apparently entirely random materials and phenomena.
The Nobel Prize for chemistry will be awarded on Wednesday, literature on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday. The prize for economic sciences will be announced on Monday.
Two U.S. scientists won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their work in human heat receptors.