Dust over the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden

Dust over the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden

On July 14, 2011, dust hung over the Red Sea, obscuring the coastlines on either side of that water body. To the south, a dust plume blew over the Gulf of Aden. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite took this picture the same day.

Due to a cloud bank along the Somalia coast, the origin of the dust plume over the Gulf of Aden is unclear. The dust could have blown southward from the Red Sea, but the thickness of this plume compared to the dust in the north suggests that the dust in the south arose along the western shore of the Gulf of Aden.

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