hands up! >> don't shoot! >> what do we want? justice! >> when do we want it? >> now! >> they are running towards base... >>...explosions going off we're not quite sure... >> fault lines al jazeera america's award winning, investigative series... on al jazeera america . >> this is techknow. >> the scientists of fighting a wildfire. we are going to explore the enter section of hardware and humanity and we are doing it in a unique way. this is a show about science. >> oh, my god. >> by scientists. ♪ tonight, techknow investigates extreme weather. >> flash flood warning for northwestern los angeles. >> dr. shina shawara is a 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? what's really going on? >> it's 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 clouds. >> can we weather the extremes?

that's our team. let's 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 it's 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 it's not just the devastation caused by extreme weather but hidden cost as well. >> it's whether it is rain, heat, drought. it's happening. it's big. let's take a look. oxnard, california december 12th, 2014. >> roger, a flash flood warning for northwestern

los angeles. >> national weather service severe weather team has been at it for hours. >> the storm was no surprise. scientists and techknow's 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 angeles. >> they are expecting 6 to 8 inches of rain today. 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 service. >> can you talk a little bit about that's extreme events: it's the whole wardrobe. slickers. >> severe weatherents rain from did he havestrating extremes to record snowfall in north earn japan and widespread drought to lake-effect 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

lake-effect snow schu. 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 lake-effect 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 more? >> i think that's a reasonable seeing. >> when it's extreme weather like buffalo's 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 state. 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 that's 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 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, let's 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 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.

>> 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 head-on. there are a lot of economic consequences as well. 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.

let's 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 it's 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. >> that's a breeze compared to a category 1 hurricane. here, a wall of fans can hour. >> that's 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 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, 2005's hurricane katrina with $149,000,000,000 in losses.

>> this one is unprecedented because it's 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 dan tanya brown heads the hail engineering term that designed the hailstorm. >> we may not have huge fires,

huge hurricanes, things like that, but we have hail every sing year. 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 ring-shaped nails, you are doubling the strength of the connections you were already going to make for about 70 to maybe $100. >> that's 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. >> that's what we want to be prepared for. >> clumd signismists are huge. all the single uncertainty is >> an america tonight investigation >> somebody could come in and take our home away from us >> it was a law that helped condo developments stay afloat >> we would have to sell and have to leave our unit >> now, this law is being used to take peoples homes >> there's nobody helping us...

>> honest people, losing hope... >> i didn't fight vietnam so that someone could take my property away from me >> hard sell an america tonight investigation only on al jazeera america

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. it's 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. let's 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 investigating something that's tiny but 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 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 head-on. >> aerosol particles are complicated chemical mixtures of everything. millions to billions of different compounds. >> figuring out how the chemistry of what lies on the ocean's surface has an impact on cloud formation and weather, two of the most challenging

environmental unknowns. >> it's actually blowing apart. so each time it comes down, that's 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 that's 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 what's in the sea water and what makes it out, that's what is important to the clouds and climate. some airerosols warm 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 same. >> the 44 meter flume holds 56,000 gallons of water pumped from the pacific. a hydraulic paddle sends waves down where

crash. 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 earth's 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 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 properties. >> has an effect on global weather patters. >> grants dean's hope is data from these tank experiments will improve models for problems storms. >> results we learn here climate and weather are not the same thing. weather is what we get on a day-to-day 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 cloud and improve the model treatment and be able to predict where the clouds are, this will be a huge, huge effect on our ability to understand what temperatures we are going to be facing in the future. >> time and time again when we look at these different disciplines of science, we have

learned we exploit the earth, we have such little awareness of what type of impact we are having, how little do we know? >> if you think about it, we are just discovering that that top millimeter of the ocean surface potentially is driving a huge part of a weather system. planet? >> it blew my mind. >> i am a biologist. i should know these things. all of those micro organizenisms producing tiny particles that are seeding clouds that are driving weather and in a broader scale, driving climate. >> does that mean that everything we have ever stud ilked and researched and invalid? >> no. what we need to look at is this is another piece in the puzzle. in climate modeling to help us understand how this very complex dynamic system works. >> they say you can't control

the weather. but with all we have learned today, we are definitely getting closer to understanding how to predict it and how to deal with its impact. absolutely now just scratching the surface. >> that's it for this episode of techno knowdive deep did into these stories and go behind the scenes at aljazeera.com/techknow. follow our expert contributors on twitter, insta graham, google+ and more.

>> i think this is very important for us and the fact that today was the additional increasing of the financial support is very important and is the right time frame in need is a friend indeed. i can once more reaffirm my strong support of speedy implementation for this system of reform all stage governance for prosperity of democratic