Dust from the Arabian Peninsula and a wake from Socotra Island may have collaborated to create dust streamers over the Arabian Sea in early September 2006. Wind passing over an island can create a wake, affecting atmospheric patterns downwind. Satellites have long observed such phenomena in clouds. On September 9, 2006, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying onboard NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of what appears to be an island wake. Rather than affecting clouds, however, this wake appears to affect a dust plume. The Arabian Peninsula produces a substantial portion of Earth’s dust storms, and the area likely supplied the dust captured in this image. Once caught in the island’s wake, the dust produced two streamers running in a roughly parallel direction.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data provided by the MODIS Rapid Response team.
