Ioan Sabin Taranu

Moldova/Estonia

Incorporating water management in an Earth System Model for improved climate, impact and adaptation modelling, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium).

I was inspired by great physicists of the past, such as Feynman and Einstein, from a young age.
Dreaming of becoming like them someday, I pursued a Bachelor’s in Physics. While my passion for
physics never faded, during my bachelor I was exposed through friends, news media, and personal
observations to the reality of Climate Change.

At some point, I realized that people with my background could become not only a part of the
problem but also a part of the solution in our unified efforts to mitigate and adapt to global warming
and its effects. This motivated me to join the Master’s program in Ocean, Atmosphere, and Climate
Sciences at the University of Lyon, France.

During my Master’s studies, I worked on several projects related to climate change and its impacts.
Together with four other master students and two researchers from the Snow Research Center
(CEN, Grenoble), we were the first to explore the impact of global warming on the skiing industry
on the Pan-European scale. Being surprised by the not-so-optimistic results, I was motivated to dive
deeper into climate modeling and understand to which extent we can trust the current generation of
climate models. Thus, I dedicated my master thesis to this topic and explored the fundamental
mechanisms behind the GCMs/RCMs climate change projections discrepancies over Europe
(CNRM, Toulouse).

In addition to my studies, I worked part-time as a National Consultant in IT applied to Climate
Modeling in my home country, the Republic of Moldova, and made my small contribution to our
future National Communication to the UNFCCC.

Through the inventWater project, I hope to contribute to the development of climate, impact, and
adaptation modeling, by extending the capabilities of the Community Earth System Model
(CESM2) to account for industrial and domestic water use, and climate-smart water management.
Being part of the inventWater project is a fantastic opportunity, and I am looking forward to doing
impactful research together with other ESRs and colleagues.