weather

Weather experts are gathering at the World Meteorological Organisation later this month to discuss ultra-short lasers as a promising tool for weather modulation and climate studies. Launching these lasers into the atmosphere could potentially control lightning and also assist in cloud production and rainfall. Researchers have begun testing the equipment outside, by firing short pulses of laser light at the sky.

Via Laughing Squid:

Last Thursday, December 11, 2014, the Grand Canyon was filled with a sea of fog in a stunningly beautiful and rare weather event. The fog was trapped in the canyon by warm air above in what is known as a total cloud inversion.

Masked in the chaos, however, was an enormous plume of dust that the Russian meteor left behind in Earth's atmosphere. This cloud, which had hundreds of tons of material in it, was still lingering three months after the Feb. 15 explosion, a new study has found. Scientists created a video of the Russian meteor explosion's dust cloud to illustrate the phenomenon.