By: EFE
By: EFE
The Nobel Prize in Physics today recognized three researchers for their “pioneering” contributions to understanding so-called complex physical systems, one of which is the Earth’s climate, which allows reliable prediction of global warming.
The award is divided this year into two halves, one for the Japanese-American Syukuro Manabe and the German Klaus Hasselmann and the another for the Italian Giorgio Parisi .
Manabe and Hasselmann laid the basis of knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how Humanity has influenced him. The Nobel recognizes them for their “physical modeling of the Earth’s climate, the quantification of the variability and the reliable prediction of global warming “.
Parisi, for his part, revolutionized the theory of disordered materials and Random processes from the atomic to the planetary scale, noted the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the institution that grants the award.
BREAKING NEWS:
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2020 # NobelPrize in Physics to Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems. ” pic.twitter.com/At6ZeLmwa5– The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2021
The winners’ findings show that knowledge about climate rests on “a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of the observations “, highlighted at a press conference the president of the Nobel Committee in Physics, Thors Hans Hansson.
Part of the knowledge awarded this year is closely related to climate change and Parisi was asked about it, who spoke by phone at the press conference in which the award was announced.
The Italian physicist then sent a message to the leaders who will participate in the next United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 26) in the United Kingdom to which urged to take strong decisions to curb climate change .
In its explanation of the award, the Academy of Sciences highlighted that complex systems have been studied for centuries and that the French Joseph Fourier already took care in the XIX century to investigate the energy balance between the solar radiation towards the ground and the radiation from the ground .
At the end of the 19th century, the Swedish Svante Arrhenius, awarded in 1903 with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, revealed the physics behind this effect, contributing a piece important to understand the impact of carbon dioxide (CO2).
In the decade of 1950, Syukuro Manabe, emigrated to Its T United States after World War II, began to study how higher levels of CO2 can cause an increase in temperatures, but instead of focusing on the balance of radiation it did so in the transport of air masses and the latent heat of water vapor .
Thus, he discovered that when the CO2 level doubled, the global temperature rose more than 2 degrees , and his work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.
A decade later than his colleague, the German Klaus Hasselmann created a model that links time and climate, thereby answering the question of why climate models can be reliable despite the changing and chaotic weather .
Hasselmann also discovered that changes in solar radiation or greenhouse gas levels leave unique signals (traces) that can be separated, a method that can be applied to the human effect in the climate system .
Manabe, Hasselmann and Parisi succeed in the award to the British Roger Penrose, the German Reinhard Genzel and the American Andrea Ghez, distinguished in 2020 for his discoveries related to black holes.
Parisi will receive half of the 10 million SEK (980, 000 euros, $ 1.1 million) with what is do won the Nobel, while his colleagues will split the other.
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