Climate Physics & Complex Systems
Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann & Giorgio Parisi
About This Prize
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” and the other half to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.” Manabe demonstrated how increased concentrations of carbon dioxide lead to higher temperatures in the atmosphere, laying the groundwork for modern climate models. Hasselmann created methods to link weather and climate, proving that climate models can be reliable despite the chaotic nature of weather. Parisi discovered hidden patterns in disordered complex materials, providing some of the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems.
Syukuro Manabe
“Physical Modelling of Earth’s Climate”
Klaus Hasselmann
“The Human Footprint of Climate Change”
Giorgio Parisi
“Multiple Equilibria”
Key Concepts
- • First Climate Models (1960s): Manabe pioneered models coupling radiative transfer and convection, demonstrating the direct link between CO₂ concentration and atmospheric temperature
- • Detection & Attribution: Hasselmann developed methods to detect and attribute anthropogenic climate change, creating a fingerprint approach to separate human influence from natural variability
- • Replica Symmetry Breaking: Parisi’s revolutionary solution to the spin glass problem revealed how disordered systems can have many competing equilibrium states with broken replica symmetry
- • Disorder & Complex Phenomena: Deep mathematical connections between disordered systems in physics and complex phenomena across fields from mathematics to biology and neuroscience