[paganel]

> computer-based climate simulation

I'm no scientist by any stretch of the imagination, the last time when I read something related to higher physics was ~20 years ago, in college, but I have to ask how is that topic related to modern physics. You're correct, it sounds like like a worthy Nobel for an Earth Sciences Nobel, or a Meteorology one (to be more direct), if those two things existed (maybe they should), but, again, don't know how meteorology (what computer-based climate simulation basically is) is the same thing as higher physics.

[evanb]

As a physicist, I try to avoid the snobbery of limiting myself to "higher physics". A wide variety of physical systems are interesting, not just fundamental particle physics. Physics contains multitudes; graphene, giant magnetoresistence, fiber optics, and systems more complex.

[paganel]

But then again physics risks following the (wrong) road taken by economics a while ago, when it decided that almost all modern human-activity can be in fact studied through the economics lens.

[jean_tta]

Surely studying the climate, i.e. a physical system, is completely in the realm of physics. Certainly, it is closer to whatever definition of physics you may have, than education or kidney donation (to take two examples) are to economics.

[maep]

Meteorology is a sub-branch of physics.