Nobel Prize in physics awarded to scientists whose work warned the world of climate change

CNN

The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to scientists Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi, whose groundbreaking work over the past 60 years predicted climate change and decoded complex physical systems.

Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, were jointly honored for "the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming," according to the press release from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Both men carried out pioneering work in the 1960s and 1970s that sounded an early alarm on man-made climate change.

Italian physicist Parisi, 73, claimed the other half of the award, for "the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales."

The trio were announced as winners at a news conference Tuesday in Stockholm, Sweden.

Manabe's work in the 1960s demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused the Earth's temperature to rise. In doing so, he "laid the foundation for the development of current climate models," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

A decade later, Hasselmann "created a model that links together weather and climate."

Parisi's discoveries, meanwhile, "make it possible to understand and describe many different and apparently entirely random complex materials and phenomena." This is not only true for physics but also for other areas, such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning, the academy added.

The committee's decision to recognize pioneering work on climate change comes weeks before the world's leaders meet at COP26, a crucial summit in the United Kingdom.

Parisi acknowledged the timeliness of the award while speaking with reporters after the announcement. He said it is "urgent that we take a very strong position, and we move at a very strong pace," adding: "It's clear that for the future generations, we have to act now, in a very fast way."

On Monday, the Nobel Prize in medicine was given to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.

claim

表示“获得；赢得；取得”，英文解释为“to gain, win or achieve sth”举个🌰：

She has finally claimed a place on the team.

她终于成了那支队的队员。

sound the alarm

表示“拉响警报；发出警报”，英文解释为“to cause a noise to be made or say or shout a message to warn people about something”举个🌰：

Quick, sound the alarm - there's a fire in the machine room!

快，拉警报——机房里着火了！

variability

表示“可变性；易变性；反复不定”，英文解释为“the fact of sth being likely to vary”如：climatic variability 气候的多变性。