DATE2021.11.10 #Awards & Prizes

Dr. Syukuro Manabe, Nobel Prize winner in Physics, awarded the Order of Culture.

Disclaimer: machine translated by DeepL which may contain errors.

Dr. Syukuro Manabe

Dr. Syukuro Manabe, who will receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2021, was awarded the 2021 Order of Culture.

Dr. Manabe graduated from the Faculty of Science at Tohoku University in 1953, and received his Doctor of Science degree from the Graduate School of Science in 1958 for "An Integrated Study of Condensation Phenomena. He has continued his climate research as a Senior Research Scientist at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute of the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute and as a Visiting Professor at Princeton University, where he is still actively engaged in research at the age of 90.

In 1964, Dr. Manabe developed an atmospheric general circulation model, the so-called "radiative-convective equilibrium model," which theoretically reproduces the vertical structure of the Earth's atmosphere. In 1969, in collaboration with Dr. Kirk Bryan, an ocean physicist, he developed the world's first "coupled atmosphere-ocean model" that combined atmospheric and oceanic circulation, clarifying the basic structure of the climate system. In addition to clarifying the basic structure of the climate system, he was the first in the world to predict global warming based on the results of simulations using this model. These results provided the theoretical basis for the 1990 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) First Assessment Report on global warming projections.

These achievements of Dr. Manabe have been extremely well received internationally, with representative awards including the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2015 and the Crafoord Prize in 2018. And in 2021, he and Dr. Klaus Hasselmann of the Max Planck Institute in Germany will be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for "their work in physically modeling the Earth's climate, quantifying its variability, and enabling high-confidence predictions of global warming.

We would like to extend our sincere congratulations to Dr. Hasselmann and wish him continued success in his future endeavors.

Cabinet Office Website
https://www8.cao.go.jp/shokun/hatsurei/r03aki.html

(Responsibility: Professor Noriyuki Hibiya, Department of Earth and Planetary Science)