Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi have been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics. The scientists are from Japan, Germany and Italy respectively. 

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday said they have been awarded “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems.”

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The jury announced that Syukuro Manabe “demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in atmosphere lead to increased temperatures at the surface of Earth.”

They said the scientist’s work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.

Klaus Hasselmann was cited for his work in “the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.”

Giorgio Parisi, on the other hand, was awarded the Nobel Prize for “the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

All three physicists used complex mathematics to explain and predict what seemed like chaotic forces of nature, called modeling.

“Physics-based climate models made it possible to predict the amount and pace of global warming, including some of the consequences like risings seas, increased extreme rainfall events and stronger hurricanes, decades before they could be observed,” said German climate scientist and modeler Stefan Rahmstorf. He called Hasselmann and Manabe “pioneers” in this field.

When climate scientists with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, some who deny global warming dismissed it as a political move. Perhaps anticipating controversy, members of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel, emphasized that Tuesday’s was a science prize.