Physics News

The work behind one half of the 2021 Physics Nobel Prize

Rama Govindarajan
International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru, India
E-mail: [email protected]

Rama Govindarajan works on different aspects of fluid mechanics. She is interested in the transition
of a flow from the laminar to the turbulent state. Her focus has been flows where properties such as
viscosity and density vary in space, and when there are immiscible interfaces between fluids. With
collaborators, she has shown how special instabilities can happen in these flows. Recently she has
become interested in cloud flows and in flows in which particles are suspended.

Abstract
This article describes the basic ideas behind the work of Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, who together won one half
of the Nobel Prize in Physics of 2021. Both worked on climate change. Manabe provided an early estimate of how much the
Earth would warm if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Hasselmann gave us a good way of
distinguishing whether the observed changes are human made. A significant part of this article is about the background.
Manabe's work is discussed at some length, whereas Hasselmann’s is described briefly. This is only because I am less familiar
with the latter’s work. This article draws heavily from [1].

The earth’s radiation budget from a toy model Consider the Sun and the earth to be spherical black bodies in
steady state. The Sun is at Ts = 5778 K, and has a radius
It was a truly exciting moment for the physics community Rs = 696,340 km. It radiates Qtot = σ(4πR2s )T4s Wm–2 , where
when last year’s Nobel Prize was announced: it went to the σ = 5.67 × 10–8 Wm–2 K–4 is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant.
understanding of complex systems, and in particular the
The fraction of Qtot which reaches one face of the earth is
physics of climate change. The science behind the prize has
been explained very well in [1] which this article draws quite πR2e /(4πd2 ), where Re is the radius of the earth and d = 148.81
a bit from. I open with a basic outline of the climate change million km is the earth-sun distance. A fraction  of this is
problem, to better appreciate the Nobel-winning contribution. reflected back to space by clouds, ice sheets, aerosols etc. Per
Climate is of course an immensely complex problem and unit area of the earth, the net incoming solar radiation is thus
important elements will be ignored in this article. QS = σ(1–α)R2s T4s /(4d2 ) = 242 Wm-2 , taking α = 0.3. This is
shown in Figure 1. As we know, this radiation peaks in the
visible range of wavenumbers, and so is referred to as
incoming shortwave radiation. This is an average estimate –
the radiation varies with the latitude, time of the day, and time
of the year, among other things. In the steady state, the average
outgoing radiation from the top of the atmosphere is the same
as the incoming radiation, i.e., QO = QS , giving TO ∼ 255 K.
Since the earth is at a far lower temperature than the Sun, it
emits in microwave, so QO is called OLR, or outgoing
longwave radiation. The atmosphere is relatively transparent
to the incoming shortwave radiation but absorbs a part of the
outgoing radiation. If there were no atmosphere, we would
have the temperature of the bare earth to be Tbare = TO , i.e., an
inhospitable earth. So greenhouse gases are needed for life on
Figure 1: The simplest calculation of warming by greenhouse earth and for the beautiful and diverse climate we enjoy. It is
effects in steady state. The Sun is depicted in yellow, and the just that when they go out of their delicate balance, the climate
earth by a blue dot. The atmosphere is depicted as being and life on earth are in trouble. The simplest way to consider
concentrated in a single layer shown in pink. Below, a piece the effect of the atmosphere is to take it as a single layer which
of the earth and atmosphere are shown as flat objects, for ease does not transmit, but radiates equally above and below, as
of viewing. shown by the pink line in Figure 1. In the steady state, we have

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QE = QS + QO = 2QO , giving TE ≃ 302 K. This argument The correlation between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
provides a reasonable order-of-magnitude estimate for the earth's temperature has, at least for 8 lakh years before the
effect of the atmosphere, and the reader can perform the present, always been very strong, as can be seen in Figure 2.
exercise of seeing how much warmer the earth could be if we In recent times, carbon dioxide concentrations has reached
had several such non-transmitting layers of the atmosphere. unprecedented levels and is rising at a staggering rate, as a
comparison between Figures 2 and 3 will show. Already the
More on greenhouse gases earth by warmed by about a degree. The absolute magnitude
We know that the model given above is too simplistic. The of change is very worrying but more than this, the rate of
atmosphere is far more complicated than a series of layers. It change is simply alarming. Life on earth has no time to adapt
contains different greenhouse gases, whose concentration is a to such fast changes.
function of time, height above the ground, emissions,
temperature etc. These gases transmit in some windows of
wavelength and absorb in others. Here is where the
contributions of Syukuro Manabe have been crucial to our
understanding, but more on this later. This article is about
carbon dioxide and water vapour, although other greenhouse
gases, even if in trace concentrations can be significant too.
The basic argument for climate change, which is completely
accepted now by the scientific community, runs as follows. As
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, it absorbs more of
the energy radiated by the earth. This causes the temperature
of the atmosphere to increase. The bad news does not end
there. We know that our clothes dry better on a hotter day,
i.e., evaporation rates are increased with temperature. We can
see this from the following approximate form of the Clausius- Figure 3: Carbon dioxide is increasing at an extremely sharp
Clapeyron equation, rate in recent times (shown here in years before 2017), and
𝑝𝑐 𝐿 1 1 global temperature is following. Taken from
log ≃ − [ − ], (1) https://i2.wp.com/chartedterritory.us/wp-content/uploads/
𝑝𝑜 𝑅 𝑇𝑐 𝑇𝑜
2018/03/10ktemperatureco2.png.
where p is for saturation vapour pressure (here of water
vapour), L and R are the latent heat of evaporation and the gas The study of global warming due to greenhouse gases started
constant respectively, and the subscripts o and c refer to a long time before Syukuro Manabe’s work. Joseph Fourier in
‘original’ and ‘changed’ respectively. It is obvious that the the early 1800s worked out intuitively that the earth would be
atmosphere can hold more total water vapour at higher significantly colder if it lacked an atmosphere. The first clear
temperature. In other words, an increase in temperature means experiments demonstrating the greenhouse effect were made
increased evaporation from oceans, other water bodies etc. by Eunice Newton Foote [2]. She showed that the
The increased water vapour then further increases earth's temperatures inside cylinders placed under the sun and filled
temperature because water vapour is a powerful greenhouse with carbon dioxide and water vapour were higher than those
gas. This increase will continue until earth reaches a new with air. Her findings were however not taken note of at the
hotter steady state. Water vapour thus provides a ‘positive time. Whether this was because of her gender or because she
feedback,’ i.e., a mechanism for worsening global warming was an amateur scientist, we have no real way of saying. She
when carbon dioxide concentrations increase. said “An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high
temperature; and if, as some suppose, at one period of its
history, the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at
present, an increased temperature from its own action, as well
as from increased weight, must have necessarily resulted.”
John Tyndall [3] is most often credited with the discovery of
greenhouse gases. His experiments were much more
quantitative than Foote's and besides, he actually showed that
these gases were capable of absorbing microwave longwave
radiation of the type emanating out of the earth whereas
Foote’s experiments were about the absorption of sunlight.
Figure 2: The strong correlation between global temperature Svante Arrhenius [4] in 1896 made a remarkable advance,
and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be seen from taking into consideration not only the water vapour feedback,
prehistoric times in this figure. Taken from but also the effects of ice melting. His simple estimate was that
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/temperature- earth’s temperature would rise by about 6 degrees for a
change. doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (a measure now

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called climate sensitivity), while modern estimates range from is shown as the green line in Figure 4. This lapse rate comes
2.5 to 4 degrees [1]. about since the atmosphere is, to a very good approximation,
an ideal gas, and would in addition satisfy the hydrostatic
Some of Suykuro Manabe’s contributions condition dP/dz = – ρg, where P is the pressure, z is the
Manabe and collaborators’ work [5, 6, 8, 9] pushed the vertical coordinate, ρ is the density and g is the acceleration
frontiers in several ways. They constructed a one-dimensional due to gravity. Using these and the adiabatic condition P ∝ ργ ,
(in the vertical) model of the atmosphere, which included the with a few steps of algebra (which the reader is encouraged to
all-important convective-adjustment process, to get a good carry out), we obtain dT/dz ≃ –10 K/km. However, the actual
estimate of how temperature varies with height in the temperature gradient of the atmosphere in the vertical
atmosphere. This variation is important to get right for many direction is about 6 K/km. So the atmosphere would only be
reasons, such as for estimating the evaporation and upward stable if the temperature gradient were to be equal to or smaller
movement of water vapour, which in turn affects the than this number. Consequently, with radiative transfer alone,
temperature gradient. Now, if air stayed still and could only the atmosphere is very unstable, and therefore large-scale, and
radiate heat, the temperature in the atmosphere would go down often violent, convection is a normal state of the earth's
at the rate of 15 degrees per km, as shown by the red line in atmosphere. Further, Manabe and his collaborators included
Figure 4. But air, and for that matter, any fluid, undergoes the fact that the atmosphere is moist, i.e., contains water
convection under many circumstances. In the kitchen, we vapour. When moist air from the earth's surface is convected
often take a vessel of water and heat it from below. The top of upwards to great heights, condensation takes place, since the
fluid is cool (and therefore dense) relative to the fluid at the temperature is lower and the air gets supersaturated (by the
bottom, which is hot (and light). Initially the water everywhere Clausius-Clapeyron equation again). So, latent heat is released
is still, but beyond a certain temperature difference, this into the atmosphere which then warms up relative to the dry
situation is unstable. Water from below starts moving adiabatic lapse rate, to result in about a 6 degree reduction per
(advecting) to the top and vice-versa. km, as shown in blue in Figure 4. The latent heat produces
what we term as “volumetric heating”. The one-dimensional
model of Manabe incorporated this and a lot of other physics.
In particular it took into account the absorption and radiation
at every height in the atmosphere based on local
concentrations of carbon dioxide and water vapour, and also
the fact that water vapour and carbon dioxide only absorb
radiation in selected wavelength windows. They then
provided a reliable estimate of climate sensitivity, of about 2
degrees per doubling of carbon dioxide. Imagine if the world
had taken note of their findings, given them the Nobel Prize
right then, and more important, and decades ago taken urgent
measures to go green! The estimates of Manabe and
Figure 4: Lapse rate of temperature in the lowest portion of Wetherald [5] of how atmospheric temperature would change
the atmosphere. in response to increasing carbon dioxide is shown in Figure 6.
An example of this at large scales is seen in an instantaneous
snapshot in Figure 5. Fluid is rising from below, and a lot of
large scale horizontal convective activity emerges, seemingly
out of nowhere. The fluid is in strong turbulence.

Figure 5: Convection in unstable stratification. The height of

the computational domain is small and can be seen in the front
of the figure, where hot (yellow) plumes are seen to be rising.
We are primarily seeing the top view here. Kindly provided by Figure 6: Finding of Manabe. Change in the lapse rate of
temperature in the atmosphere as the carbon dioxide
Jörg Schumacher. Similar studies appear in [10].
concentration in the atmosphere increases. Note that the
Now the earth’s atmosphere were totally dry and in perfect earth’s surface gets warmer but the stratosphere gets cooler.
equilibrium, would display the dry adiabatic lapse rate, which Taken from [5].

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Note that temperature at the surface and up to a height of about on an average gets hotter than the poles, there is poleward
13 km shows an increase, whereas the stratosphere actually advection. But just a look at winds and ocean currents show
cools with increase in carbon dioxide! This is one direct us that the reality is hugely complex. Note how different the
evidence that global warming is due to greenhouse effects winds at the surface are, in this instantaneous snapshot, to
rather than due to increased radiation from the Sun for some those at a height of about 5 km! It is hard to visualise the
reason. The reason for the cooling of the stratosphere is complex and ever-changing large scale three-dimensional
beyond the scope of this article, but provides an interesting patterns of air movement. Secondly there are slow and fast
feature for the reader to investigate on her own. Manabe’s processes, and this is central to Hasselmann’s thinking. As just
recent article [7] contains a brilliant exposition of this topic. one example, air at the surface can respond quickly to local
temperature changes, whereas timescales in the ocean are a lot
The numerical model developed by Manabe and coworkers is
slower.
thus prescient and highly remarkable. Modern climate models
include a lot more details, but their foundations remain the
same as proposed in Manabe’s model. A revealing exercise
has been conducted in [1] using the Moderate Resolution
Atmospheric Transmission (MODTRAN) climate model.
They say “MODTRAN simulates the emission and absorption
of infrared radiation in the atmosphere in the same manner as
Manabe and Wetherald [5] but with modern spectral data and
methods.” This is shown in Figure 7. We see that in large
Figure 8: The atmosphere (a) on earth’s surface and (b) at
windows in the wavenumber range, greenhouse gases strongly
about 5.5 km, and the ocean surface (c) at about 09:15 GMT
reduce emission to outer space.
on 15 March, 2022. Winds and currents are shown by the thin
white arrows, while temperature is shown in colour. Taken
from https://earth.nullschool.net.
Figure 9 shows a schematic of a great conveyor belt in the
ocean which transports heat and salt from one place to another
over millenia. Hasselmann was interested in another
separation of time scales: that between weather and climate.
Just as a very large number of air molecules bombarding a dust
particle makes it execute Brownian motion at a speed much
slower than the air molecules, rapid weather fluctuations can
drive the climate.

Figure 7: The earth emits longwave radiation to outer space

(shown on the y-axes in W/m2) as shown by the jagged solid
black lines. The different smooth lines from the lowest upward
are for radiation from the earth if it were a blackbody at 220,
240, 260 (blue), 280 (magenta) and 300 K. (a) If there were to
be no carbon dioxide. (b) 1000 ppm of carbon dioxide with no
additional water vapour. (c) New steady state after allowing
for additional water vapour concentration in the atmosphere
resuting from heating. Taken from [1].
Figure 9: Thermohaline circulation in the ocean. Taken from
Some of Klaus Hasselmann’s contributions Wikipedia.
As mentioned in the abstract, this author’s limited knowledge We know that governments and all people need to take urgent
make this section very brief. But Klaus Hasselmann’s action to mitigate climate change and its effects. But these
contributions are supremely important as well. He realised that efforts get postponed or highly reduced due to myriad reasons.
spatial and temporal teleconnections, or the correlations Foremost among these reasons is that climate-change
between climate anomalies, are very important for the climate skepticism has been high, where people are not convinced that
models, and devised approaches which account for them. A climate change is actually happening primarily due to
flavor of how complicated the earth system is can be imagined anthropogenic causes. Hasselmann’s science was directed at
from viewing Figure 8. We are told that because the equator attributing causality. With methods developed from his ideas,

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we are able to show with greater and greater certainty that References
humans and their lifestyles have caused untold harm to earth’s
1. “Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021”,
climate. The Assessment Reports of the Intergovermental
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2021, NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize
Panel for Climate Change reflect this increasing certainty, in Outreach AB 2022, Tue. 12 Apr 2022,
the far stronger adjectives and adverbs used in more recent https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2021/summary/
assessment reports attributing responsibility to anthropogenic 2. E.N. Foote, “Circumstances affecting the Heat of the Sun’s
causes. Hasselmann also provided a systematic way to assess Rays, American Association for the Advancement of Science
the performance of numerical climate models in the light of (AAAS) Conference”, (1856)
ever-increasing observational data. 3. J. Tyndall, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. 10, 37–39 (1860)
4. S. Arrhenius, Phil. Mag Ser. 5, 237–276
It is hoped that this article has given the reader a first flavour 5. S. Manabe and R.T. Wetherald, J. Atmos. Sci. 24, 241–259
of why half the 2021 Physics Nobel Prize was awarded to (1967)
Syukoru Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann. Also if it has ignited 6. S. Manabe, S. and K. Bryan, J. Atmos. Sci. 26, 786–789 (1969)
an interest in climate change as a research problem in even a 7. S. Manabe, Tellus A: Dyn. Meteorol. Oceanogr. 71(1), 1620078
small number of readers, the article has reached its objective. (2019)
8. S. Manabe and R.F. Strickler, J. Atmos. Sci. 21, 361 (1964)
Acknowledgements 9. S. Manabe and R.T. Wetherald, J. Atmos. Sci. 32, 3 (1975)
10. Valentina Valori and Jörg Schumacher, Europhys. Lett. 134,
This article has drawn significantly from the lectures in ICTS 34004 (2021)
of John Wettlaufer, J. Srinivasan and R. Shankar. Grateful 11. K. Hasselmann, Rev. Geophys., 4(1), 1– 32 (1966)
thanks to Jörg Schumacher for providing Figure 5. Support of 12. K. Hasselmann, Proc. R. Soc. A 299, 77–100 (1967)
the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, 13. K. Hasselmann, Tellus 28(6), 473-485 (1976)
under project no. RTI4001 is gratefully acknowledged. 14. K. Hasselmann, On the Signal-to-Noise Problem in
Atmospheric Response Studies. In: Meteorology of Tropical
Oceans, Ed. by D.B. Shaw. London: Roy Meteorol Soc., pp. 251
259 (1979)

Syukuro Manabe Klaus Hasselmann

(Photo Courtesy: http://nobelprize.org/)

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