Climate change is weaponizing the atmosphere

Our "weaponized" atmosphere -  a Phoenix
TV helicopter pilot, Bruce Haffner,
snapped  this picture of a "rainbomb".

Evidence shows that the sky is coming down on our heads—the watery part of it, anyway, in larger and larger cascades. It’s largely our own fault.

The past two months have seen some doozies just in the U.S. The Empire State Building was struck by lightning twice on Monday during a storm that brought an inch of rain down in what felt like a single sheet.

Last month, at least 23 people died in West Virginia flooding. At its peak on June 23, more than 8 inches to 10 inches fell within half a day—a once-every-1,000 years rain storm. Maelstroms in May and early June dropped five times as much rain as normal near Houston, seriously challenging the definition of normal. More than a dozen people died. It was the city's fifth major flood in just over a year. (Rainfall is trending higher nationally, though paving over much of Texas probably doesn't help.)

The most dramatic recent image came from Bruce Haffner, a Phoenix TV helicopter pilot, who snapped what looks very much like a 20-megaton warhead going off. This is informally known as a “rain bomb".

Read Eric Roston’s story on Bloomberg - “Climate change is weaponizing the atmosphere.”