Nobel Prizes in Physics Go To Climate Scientists
From this:
Three scientists on Tuesday were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics for their “revolutionary contributions” to the world’s understanding of the climate—and how human activity, such as the emission of carbon dioxide, impacts it.
“The discoveries being recognized this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation.”
Syukuro Manabe of Princeton University and Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany were jointly awarded half of the prize for their work on “the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a press release.
Giorgio Parisi, a theoretical physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome, was awarded the other half of the prize for “the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”
Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said in a statement that “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.”
“This year’s laureates have all contributed to us gaining deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems,” Hansson added.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel Prizes for physics and chemistry, summarized the three scientists’ contributions (in the article linked above).
—
Heartiest congratulations to all.
Further developments in climate change mitigation and adaptation will likely come from sharpening our understanding of major planetary systems, e.g., the melting of the great ice sheets on Greenland and the Antarctic.
In addition, we need breakthroughs on diminishing the effects we’re experiencing. Donald Trump suggested hitting hurricanes with nuclear weapons. While that won’t work, we need to hope there are actions we can take, short of geoengineering, to deal with the situation.
