On May 3, 2005, an immense dust storm spanning hundreds of kilometers was washing over Saudi Arabia. The light tan dust plume is narrow in the north, over Iraq, and widens into a massive cloud in Saudi Arabia. Waves of dust spread eastward over the Persian Gulf, as well. This image of the event was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image at additional resolutions.
Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC
