Climate change is 'huge threat to humanity', physics Nobel Prize winner warns

Climate change is a "huge threat to humanity" and governments need to act as quickly as possible, the physics Nobel Prize winner has warned.

Dr Giorgio Parisi, 73, won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday alongside fellow physicists Japanese-born American Dr Syukuro Manabe and German Dr Klaus Hasselmann.

Their work over the past several decades has focused on understanding complex physical systems such as Earth's changing climate.

"I am very pleased to have this Nobel because it is a recognition of all the field I have been working in," Dr Parisi, from Italy, told reporters following the prestigious win.

But he warned that climate change is a "huge threat to humanity" and it is "very important" governments act as quickly as possible.

One half of the 10-million Swedish crown (£841K) prize will be awarded in equal parts to Dr Manabe, 90, and Dr Hasselmann, 89, for modelling the Earth's climate and reliably predicting global warming.

Dr Parisi, whose work largely centres around tiny subatomic particles, will receive the other half for discovering the "hidden rules" behind seemingly random movements and swirls in gases or liquids in the early 1980s, which can also be applied to aspects of neuroscience, machine learning and starling flight formations.

The win has been hailed by the UN weather agency as a sign of a consensus forming around man-made global warming.

In a statement, the Swedish Academy of Sciences said: "Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth's climate and how humanity influences it."

Meanwhile, Dr Hasselmann said: "Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes."

Dr Hasselmann, of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, added he did not want to wake up from what he described as a beautiful dream.

The academy said that Dr Manabe, who works at Princeton University in the US, had laid the foundation for today's understanding of Earth's climate in the 1960s.

Dr Parisi was asked what his message would be to world leaders due to meet for UN climate change talks in Glasgow, Scotland, from 31 October.

"I think it is very urgent that we take real and very strong decisions and we move at a very strong pace," he said.

Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work on climate change before, with former US Vice President Al Gore and the UN climate panel receiving the Peace Prize in 2007 for galvanizing international action against global warming.

And one half of the 2018 Economics prize went to William Nordhaus for integrating climate change into the Western economic growth model.