Haze Along the Himalaya

Haze Along the Himalaya

Haze lingered along the southern face of the Himalaya in early November 2008, continuing a pattern from the previous month. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the region on November 11, 2008. In this image, a likely combination of smoke and dust swirls through northern India, west of Nepal. The red dots near the upper left corner of the image indicate fires. Fires—sometimes far more numerous than those shown in this image—burned intermittently in this area in early November, but probably cannot account for all of the haze. Urban pollution and dust from neighboring Pakistan might play a role.

NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.