Physical modelling of Earth’s climate: 2021 Nobel Prize winners in Physics Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann

In 2021, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex systems”, with half awarded 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”. S. Manabe demonstrated for the first time how elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures on the Earth's surface. K. Hasselmann created a model that connects weather and climate together, developed methods for determining specific signals that leave an imprint on the climate.