Explained | The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics

Hidden patterns: Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann won the prize for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate. Giorgio Parisi has been honoured for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems. Photos: AFP, AP

The story so far: The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2021 has been awarded to climatologists Syukuro Manabe of Princeton University, U.S., and Klaus Hasselmann of Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany, and physicist Giorgio Parisi of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. The prize has been given for their “groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems”. Professors Manabe and Hasselmann will share half the prize and Professor Parisi will receive one-half of the prize. Professors Manabe and Hasselmann bagged the Prize “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”. Professor Parisi won “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales”.

How is their work linked?