An example of an idiom used in public science discourse:
"All of the climate extremes and the societal extremes [in the historical and tree ring records] that we have studied have happened under a Jet Stream regime under natural climate variability, so before we started putting CO2 into the atmosphere in massive amounts – and so now you have a climate that's on steroids, climate change, anthropogenic climate change, that's upping the variability in the Jet Stream and so all of these extremes that have happened in the past will be enhanced towards the future as well."
Prof. Valerie Trouet of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, was talking on an episode ('Historic weather extremes revealed using tree-rings') of 'Science in Action'.
To describe the climate as being 'on steroids' can be considered a metaphor, but the tag is now used so widely it can be considered to be idiomatic.
Read about communicating science through idioms
