The Nobel Prize in Physics is granted to how to predict the future of the globe in the chaotic system of climate change?
Climate change is like the wings of a butterfly. The warming of the equatorial Pacific may bring wet summers in the middle and lower sections of the Yangtze River in my nation. This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is presented to scientists who have made remarkable achievements in the subject of climate change.
The Nobel Prize Agency presented the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics to three scientists on Tuesday in appreciation of their pioneering efforts in forecasting climate change and comprehending complex physical processes.
The three scientists are Japanese-American scientist Syukuro Manabe, German scientist Klaus Hasselmann, and Italian scientist Giorgio Parisi. Among them, Shuro Manabe and Hasel earned honors for “physical models of the Earth’s climate, quantifiable variables and accurate projections of global warming”; Parisian “found the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems spanning from atomic to planetary scales” ” Awarded.
First Prize in Physics for Climate Science
Unlike the two relatively young scientists who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology on October 4, the youngest laureate of this year’s Physics Prize is the 75-year-old Italian Parisi. Both Manabe Shuro and Haselman have They are 90 and 89 years old.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences claimed in a statement that Manabe’s work in the 1960s “layed the groundwork for the creation of modern climate models,” while Hasselman “developed a model that connects weather and climate.
” Parisi’s finding “makes it feasible to analyze and explain many varied and apparently random complicated substances and occurrences.” Their work is not just relevant to physics, but also to other subjects like as mathematics, biology, neurology, and machine learning.
The Nobel Prize in Physics is mainly granted to fundamental physics professionals. This time the prize to the pioneers of physical system models also astonished the industry. But considering that the subject of climate change has become a matter of worldwide concern, this year’s Physics Prize also recognizes the significance of climate research effort.
Li Xichen, a researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told a reporter from China Business News: “This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was granted to three scientists working in the modeling of the Earth’s climate system. This is not just unexpected, but also desired. The unexpected is due of this. Prior receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics, he had never showed interest in climate science. Many individuals may assume that climate research is not physics in the classic sense.”
Li Xichen noted that the two previous prizes connected to climate and environment were the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1995 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for global climate cooperation. “The widespread assumption is that climate system research, earth system modeling, and associated chaotic fields not only entail tough understanding of physics and mathematics, but also have had a tremendous influence on our everyday lives and will undoubtedly transform the future. globe.”
Li Xichen further highlighted that the earth’s surface on which people live, encompassing land, atmosphere, oceanosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, etc., is a complex nonlinear system that mixes and interacts with each other. Although the mobility and thermal processes of most of the particles (or local air or water masses) in the atmosphere and ocean obey relatively basic rules of physics, the billions of particles (or local) in these systems have always interacted and interacted with each other. Influence, a non-linear “chaotic system” is produced.
“The butterfly effect we are acquainted with and the three-body motion are wonderful instances of chaotic systems.” Li Xichen remarked, “Generally speaking, chaotic systems are difficult to forecast, but our earth system is in a complex and non-linear environment. , And implicitly certain intriguing rules, make us theoretically have the ability of predicting the future of a specific feature of the earth.”
How to foresee the future of the earth?
The International Climate Association has defined climate change, which is the change induced by certain variables caused by climate at a given area and within a specified period. The standard time often refers to 30 years.
Since the 1970s, scientists have pretty successfully forecast the degree of planetary warming, and a major percentage of short-term weather catastrophes can also be foreseen.
These advances should be ascribed to scientists like Shuro Manabe. Manabe Shuro has been working with numerical models of the Earth’s climate system since the 1960s and 70s. The climate model created by him and his colleagues in the 1980s and 1990s has been able to mimic the Earth’s feedback on the radiative forcing generated by varied greenhouse gas concentrations.
“Simply expressed, it is to be able to predict the changes in the temperature and precipitation of the earth’s surface under various greenhouse gas concentrations in the future. The simulation findings of these climate models are vital tools for us to forecast climate change and design countermeasures. Basis.” Li Xichen informed the CBN reporter.
He noted that there are many experts in our nation who have done a lot of work on earth system modeling. “my country’s top scientific and technology award laureate Zeng Qingcun has begun to design our own climate numerical model since the 1960s, and it has been evolving to this day.” Li Xichen stated, “In this summer, my nation established a huge earth system numerical simulation device-Huanhuan in Huairou Science City. It is also a sophisticated earth system model in the globe today.”
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Nowadays, the Earth system model plays a very significant role in the investigation and prediction of the process of climate change and variability. It can not only simulate the average surface condition under different greenhouse gas concentrations, but also can well simulate the changes in the earth’s orbit, Volcanic eruptions, anthropogenic aerosols, and internal variability of the climate system have an impact on the global climate and environment.
“Especially in the forecast and prediction of severe occurrences (such as excessive rain, extreme hot temperature, cold waves, flood catastrophes, powerful typhoons, etc.), local climate change, interannual and interdecadal climatic variability, etc. are also playing more and more essential It also gives essential scientific basis for us to design ways to cope with climate change.” Li Xichen stated.
However, several scientists questioned that the work links of the three recipients of this year’s Physics Prize are not that tight. The Nobel Prize granted to scientists in two unrelated disciplines may be “patch together”.
In this respect, popular scientific writer Zhang Xuanzhong told the CBN reporter: “The contributions of these three scientists are connected to each other, since they are all so-called complex systems, and their major study is chaos, which is the so-called butterfly effect and others. Related scientific phenomena, including atmospheric physics, thus their work is still related to a certain level, although the association is not especially strong.”
