The Nobel Prize does not — and cannot reasonably — highlight the "best" physics research, because it is not possible to directly say one discipline is superior or more important than another. Rather, the Nobel features different disciplines in different years.

In this context, it's important to recall that the development of modern climate science is one of the most significant developments of 20th-century physics, and before this year, no Nobel Prize had been awarded for climate science. Similar prizes were awarded for the development of the integrated circuit and the light-emitting diode, and in these cases almost nobody finds it to be in the slightest untoward that the Prize is awarded in relation to the social impact of the work. (There are always a few crotchety purists, but more people pretend to be so when it suits them.)

So yes, awarding the Nobel for climate science is a political decision. Not awarding the Nobel for climate science would also be a political decision. In this context, it appears that the recipients are two of the most influential early theorists of climate science, who did their work decades ago.

The Nobel committee has no choice but to be politicized when science is politicized. They handled it admirably.