Syukuro Manabe
Name in native script: 真鍋淑郎
active c. 1931, Ehime, Japan
Japanese-American meteorologist-physicist, 'father' of numerical climate modeling — first to quantify climate sensitivity to CO2.
Moving from Japan to NOAA/GFDL in 1958, Manabe built the first radiative-convective atmospheric column model (1967 with Wetherald), yielding the famous quantitative result: doubling CO2 warms Earth by ~2–3 °C. He then coupled atmosphere to ocean in the first global models — the foundation of IPCC reports.
Nobel-winning work
The 2021 Nobel honored 'physical modeling of Earth's climate': Manabe showed how water-vapor, convection and radiation balance self-regulates while CO2 controls surface temperature — separating natural climate variability from human influence. The work enables attribution of global warming to human activity.
Workplaces: Princeton University, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL)
Japan, United States