Mechanical engineer. She is in the line of fire. I am stand nag tropical wind storm at 45 miles per hour. Larita davidson is a biology specializing in ecology . We are in the high drawede drawlic lab. Stormy weather is causing devastation around the world. Coincidence or Climate Change . Whats really going on . Its what happens in buffalo is what happens in buffalo unusual or the sign of things to come . Leading climate scientists weigh in. What impact does temperature and number of verticals have on the destruction of aerosols and how that impacts seeding of clouds. Can we weather the extremes . Thats our team. Lets do some science. Guys welcome to techknow. I am joined by marchita davidson. We are seeing he streams the hot get colder and all corners of the u. S. What it means in the Scientific Community is that its a really challenging time right now, challenging and exciting to go try to understand what these extreme weather patterns mean for our climate. I got to look at the significant cost involved where its not just the devastation caused by extreme weather but hidden cost as well. Its whether it is rain heat drought. Its happening. Its big. Lets take a look. Oxnard, california december 12th, 2014. Roger, a Flash Flood Warning for northwestern los angeles. National Weather ServiceSevere Weather team has been at it for hours. The storm was no surprise. Scientists and techknows camera were tracking. What meteorologists were calling the storm of the decade hit california with a vengeance a met the national i am at the in charge Weather Services. Operations were at an elevated level after one of the worst storms to hit the state. Massive snow and winds in lake tahoe, flooding rain in los angeles. They are expecting 6 to 8 inches of rain today. The river is going nuts right now. This is a chance for scientists to study in realtime the latest in a year of extreme weather events. This storm was up there with the storm of the deck aid classification. It was a very intense rainfall over a short period of time with really strong winds. John dumont is the science and Operations Officer at Los Angeles County national Weather Service. Can you talk a little bit about thats extreme events its the whole wardrobe. We are breaking out the rain slickers. Severe weatherents rain from did he havestrating extremes to record snowfall in north earn japan and widespread drought to lakeeffect snow in the united states. Shini samarra picks up the story story. All we need is cold air and warm water. November 17th, 2014, in a video that went viral, this time lapse shows the impact of lakeeffect snow schu. People were stranded on the highways. Nicholas metz is a professor of geo science at hobart and William Smith colleges in geneva new york. [i tell my students to imagine a balanced top of the moucht an. A push and that ball goes to the bottom of the moucht an. This is just the mountain flipped upsidedown just a little push it produces lakeeffect snow bands. It sounds like weather is becoming extreme . A lot of the research is show showing that as our globe starts to change extremes may become the norm. So does science suggest that this is going to happen more and more . I think thats a reasonable inference from were we are seeing. When its extreme weather like buffalos due to Climate Change and when is it just plain wild weather . A new and growing scientific field that tries to access whether Climate Change played a role. The extreme heat fueling fire fires since 2013. Is it Climate Change . According to the Research Published in the bullet of the american meteorological society, probably yes. What about the torrent be rains that hit the United Kingdom in the winter of 2014 . Climate change or just wild weather . A study of Oxford University found that that event was probably Climate Change. California suffered through three years of debilitating drought. If climate is Climate Change to blame . Probably not. According to noaa it is not an uncommon occurrence from the state. Primary weather trends are primary weather trends are factors. The weather phenomenon . There is a a lot to learn about how rivers behave and how dust particles can impact clouds over the ocean and over land. Along the coast in san diego Marita Davidson got a lesson on how particles interact with clouds and may hold the key to the climate puzzle. When we see the dust biological material thats coming from the ocean, when we see that prevent in the clouds we see lots of snowfall hit the ground. Dr. Kimberly prathser at, atmospheric chemist. She leads a team of researchers who are investigating how particles like dust and sea spray influence weather patterns . Air solis can impact some of the extreme we think patterns we are starting to see . The way you can explain some cases of drought is lets say, for example, you are in a polluted urban region. Things like soot and smoke can reduce the amount of rainfall that comes out of that cloud. Understanding how these particles play a roll in whether a cloud will produce rain or snow is an important break through. The scientists trying to understand the science as fast as we can but the choices that humans make are going to be the thing that determines how fast we can fix this problem. Coming up techknow standing up to Tropical Force Winds we want to hear what you think about these stories. Join the conversation by following us on twitter and at aljazeera. Com techknow. This trial was a sham. They are truth seekers. All they really wanna do is find out whats happening, so they can tell people. Governments around the world all united to condemn this. As you can see, its still a very much volatile situation. The government is prepared to carry out mass array. If you want free press in the new democracy let the journalists live. Al Jazeera America presents a Breakthrough Television event. Borderland. Six strangers. Lets just send them back to mexico. Experience illegal immigration up close and personal. Its overwhelming to see this many people that have perished. Lost lives are relived. All of these people shouldnt be dead. Will there differences bring them together or tear them apart . The only way to find out is to see it yourselves. Which side of the fence are you on . Borderland, tomorrow at 9 eastern, only on al Jazeera America. Welcome back to techknow. We are talking extreme weather events. Over this last year we have seen some big ones. The Scientific Community is tackling this headon. There are a lot of economic consequences as well. When money is involved eyebrows raise. Recently, noaa published results saying there were eight specific weather events that cost over 1,000,000,000. I went to a lab where they can actually simulate that kind of devastation. Lets take a look. Nan concrete chamber seven stories tall and big enough to hold nine football fields, they are making some of the most violent weather in america. Tell me about the space. This is a unique facility. We call it Mother Nature in a box. Worry focused on extreme weather events wind fact water, environment and hail. And its all powered guy this closal wall of fans. Increasing wind speed. I am standing in what appears to be a tropical windstorm at 4 file miefz per hour. Thats a breeze compared to a category 1 hurricane. Here a wall of fans can generate fans of 130 miles an hour. Thats enough to blow down a house. What we do here is building by building combat. Judy is the ceo of the Insurance Institute for business and home safety. Recreates extreme weather conditions. The escalating number of severe events, their goal is to change the way the industry builds and how codes are written and enforce did. Our research is geared toward identifying workable Practical Solutions for builders insurers Public Policy makers. We want to show people how to skip repair property against the worst Mother Nature has to offer. There has been a lot of political debate about Climate Change and the link to extreme weathers. Insurers often have to foot the bill. Where does that leave you . We have seen about 356,000,000,000 of insured losses from natural disasters between went to 02 and 2015. We know they are getting more intention. People move to vulnerable areas. Over the past decades, the prices extreme weatherents for insurers, hurricanes at 2004 billion followed by severe thunderstorms, heat and drought, severe winter weather, wildfires and flash floods. The k069liest in recent u. S. History, 2005s Hurricane Katrina with 149,000,000,000 in losses. This one is unprecedented because its being steered back toward the u. S. Coast. In second plates, 2012 super storm sandy that tore through the northeast with a 66 billion price tag. Sandy and cat a are part after disturbing trend. A recent report based upon u. S. Government statistics calculated the bill yon dollar plus weather disasters are growing by 5 a year. On the steepest upswing, severe storms often punctuated by shat shattering hailstorms up to 3,000 a year now costing 3,000 a year now costing a billion dollars annually. When you think of really destructive weather, your mind jumps to hail. Hail is something that is always around. Dan tanya brown heads the hail engineering term that designed the worlds first indoor hailstorm. We may not have huge fires, huge hurricanes things like that but we have hail every sing year. What do you use to simulate hail . Water with a mixture of soft styles or fresh ice andkraut ice stones we can shoot with our can ons. What kind of speed are they falling out. 70, 75 miles an hour or so. They can do a lot of damage especially if you have a lot of these guys on your house. Testing reveals simple solutions, more fire retardant buildings and fewer openings for embers to 3 in. Some of the Research Conducted shows that, you know just tiny Little Design to weeks can alter the outcome of how a structure survivors Severe Weather. They have here in my pocket something that these are called ring shank nails. You feel there are ridges down here so they are differently from snaimz that they will bite into the wood. If you were to change on a house from smooth snails or staples to ringshaped nails, you are doubling the strength of the connections you were already going to make for about 70 to maybe 100. Thats a huge difference for not a lot of cost if we just got the roofs right in this country, just the roofs, we estimate we could say about half of all insured, that would be billions of dollars for hundreds of dollars perrin vestment. Do you think weather could become more extreme . I think with every passenger year Mother Nature hands us another large data point. Every data point points us toward a different trend and a different definition of extreme. Thats what we want to be prepared for. Clumd signismists are huge. All the single uncertainty is how aerosols form clouds. I am Thomas Drayton at the top of the hour escalation in eastern ukraine, separatists fire rockets into the city of mariupol killing dozens of civilians. Whats at stake in president obamas threeday state visit to india . And our deeper look segment, syrians caught between multiple armies forced from their homes by bullets and bombs in trying to survive living in neighboring countries that simply cant care for them. All of that and more straight ahead. Attention all seniors, if you have medicare insurance, you may qualify for high Quality Support braces at little or know cost. I am thrilled with my knee braces there is a simple solution for seniors to get out of pain with state of the art support braces. I barely feel any pain at all. I am so happy with the quality of these braces. Call now and you could qualify for a pain relieving brace at little or no cost much can you recall the Senior Health connection sglifrningsz welcome back to techknow. We are talking extreme weather here i think we all know it goes beyond the 5 day forecast we are used to. Its complex trying to get a grasp of hour the weather works. It seems to be the more research we do, the more complex it seems to be. We have made a lot of progress in understanding how weather patterns work but we really are just scratching the surface in terms of understanding mechanisms for weather patterns and Global Climate patterns for that matter i got to visit a team of scientists and they are looking at how the ocean is driving we think and potentially climate. Lets check it out. A class atmospheric refer over the eastern Pacific Ocean with generally integrated water vapors along the corridor making landfall right in the bay area in california. December 11th, 2014, watching in realtime as a massive storm hits california. We were trying to actually see how different sources of particles ceded the clouds and affected whether they rained or snowed or sat there. Climate scientists at scrips institution of oceanography are investigatingut a huge part of the puzzle. The largest uncertainty is how aerosols form clouds and interact in clouds. The study we are doing, we will be able to fly out over the ocean and see where they are mixing and how this is ending up leading to more precipitation over california. We are in the wet lab, preparing for a field study, what we are doing right now is cleaning vials for our precipitation sachler, which we will use to collect rain samples until you use the samples to determine what ceded the clouds that made that rain. Cloud seed something where we intentionally as humans go to try to modify the properties of the cloud, usually with the hopes of getting more water to come out of that cloud. La jays joya is home to Scripps Institution of oceanography. Scientistsesists have studied for over 100 years to learn about some of the most complex issues. Ocean blankets 71 of the earth, responsible for a huge amount of clouds. The ocean serves as a very importance source. Atmospheric chemist, Kimberly Prather and her team are tackling complex issues headon. Aerosol particles are complicated chemical mixtures of everything. Millions to billions of different compounds. Figuring out how the chemistry of what lies on the oceans surface has an impact on cloud formation and weather, two of the most challenging environmental unknowns. Its actually blowing apart. So each time it comes down, thats a fingerprint of another particle. Dust, sea spray. Sea spray is one of many aerosols that researchers at scrips are studying. The aerosols float in the mist we see when waves crash along the shore. When i hear aerosol, i think of the spray can type. You and Everything Else but thats not what you are studying. We are talking about air solis like sea spray. Myriad of interactions that leads to our myriad of different chemicals that be produced in the sea water, different types of sea water and microorganisms can be lost into the air. The chemistry of whats in the sea water and what makes it out, thats what is important to the clouds and climate. Some airerosols warm the planet. Some cool to the planet. Rec. Recognized by the National Science foundation dr. Prather led a center for climate in the environment. They were the first to develop new ways. As we improve, we can improve our understanding of whether or not we are more or less likely to get extreme weather. They pumped a large volume out of water. We had our piece of it right here in the high droppics lab at scripps where they brought the ocean inside. As you can see, this 44 meter plume mimics the way waves break and produce sea spray to help us better understand how the ocean influences our climate. We go out to sea in storms and we measure the properties of the wave there and we measure the property of the waves here and make sure that they are the same. The 44 meter flume holds 56,000 gallons of water pumped from the pacific. A hydraulic paddle sends waves down where they hit a wave and crash. We try to reproduce the complexity. Oceanography grants deen overseas operation in the wave flume lab. We are focusing primarily on this thin little layer at the surface. The air and the water is the a lot of special chemistry that goes on there as well. Since the ocean ask 71 of the earths surveys surface, sea spray is one of the largest. We have measured the bubbles here to reproduce that natural process. Making bubbles. Catherine moore is a Staff Research association at ucsd and scripps. We are working an electrolysis experiments to generate bubbles and get a full aerosol distribution out of that bubble jet. We collect all of the bubbles that come up from the service and as they make sea spray aerosol, we sample them out of this tube here. In the open ocean, we have a range of temperatures from the artic and ant arctic or pacific or atlantic. If the temperature matters, we will change the cloud feeding properties. Has an effect on Global Weather patters. Grants deans hope is data from these tank experiments will improve models for problems ranging from drought to severe storms. Results we learn here climate and weather are not the same thing. Weather is what we get on a daytoday basis. Climate is what we experience over a decade. Now, we can sort of fly through and directly determine which aerosols are making the clouds, what makes the