Some random photos from this week.

Our nanny is out of town for the month.
I started back to work at A&M this week on a contract basis and we are facing a HUGE deadline.
We moved.
We have been experiencing a terrible dust storm since last Wednesday and winds pick up to 40 mph a day....often.
Our house has sand in it....everywhere...there is nothing between our 3 back sliding glass doors and Saudi.
I get old on Thursday...the BIG 20-14!!!! Although this year it will officially be known as 34. I now feel 30 and I will now allow that to be used when refering to my age. So from 20-13 I am turning 34!

Here are some pics of Maddie and Jacob's room aqnd the upstairs living area/play area

Click on pictures for a bigger view!!!!























































Oh and one more thing....

COURTNEY IS DEFENDING ON FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!


As she says, "Grad school...for those who don't know when a good thing is over"

So PROUD!!!! Now go work woman (and come see me at Thanksgiving!!!)

Courtney L. O'Neill - Master's Thesis Defense
Friday, June 13, 2008
2:00 PM
More 218 (Faculty Library)


Faculty Advisor: Dr. Richard N. Palmer


Title: "The Future Ain't What It Used To Be" A Framework for Incorporating the Impacts of Climate Change into Regional Water Supply Planning


Abstract: This paper describes a regional planning process that explicitly considers the impacts of climate change on water supply in the Puget Sound region in Washington State. The paper explores how to best incorporate long-term climate forecasts, the technical challenges of generating and communicating these forecasts and the planning framework required to successfully inform regional stakeholders. The diverse stakeholder group involved in this process included resource agencies, water supply utilities, university researchers, and non-governmental agencies. The confidence in the existence of climate change and the support for incorporating it into projections of water supply and water demand varied greatly among the stakeholders. The success of the planning framework rested directly on its ability to develop consensus among the group and to identify goals appropriate for the process.



Technical challenges in the process include the development of meteorological and hydrological data appropriate for evaluating climate impacts on water supply in a format that could be easily understood and distributed among the stakeholders. Three GCM and emission scenarios are used to develop seventy-seven year meteorological and streamflow sequences representative of the decades associated with the years 2000, 2025, 2050, and 2075.



The success of the approach is documented by the active engagement of the stakeholders in the process, the creation of a series of reports documenting the process and the technical results, and the use of the climate impacted data in a sophisticated evaluation of the region's water supply and demands for the future performed by subset of the stakeholders, the municipal water supply utilities.