STOCKHOLM: Japanese-born American Syukuro Manabe, German Klaus Hasselmann and Italian Giorgio Parisi won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for work that helps understand complex physical systems such as Earth’s changing climate.

In a decision hailed by the UN weather agency as a sign of a consensus forming around man-made global warming, one half of the 10 million Swedish crown ($1.15 million) prize goes in equal parts to Manabe, 90, and Hasselmann, 89, for modelling earth’s climate and reliably predicting global warming.

The other half goes to Parisi for discovering in the early 1980s “hidden rules” behind seemingly random movements and swirls in gases or liquids, which can also be applied to aspects of neuroscience, machine learning and starling flight formations.

“Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the

foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it’’, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement. “Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes.”

Hasselmann, who is at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, said from his home that he did not want to wake up from what he described as a beautiful dream.

“I am retired, you know, and have been a bit lazy lately. I am happy about the honour. The research continues’’, he said.

— Reuters