Dust Plumes over the Red Sea

Dust Plumes over the Red Sea

Dust blew off the coast of Sudan and over the Red Sea on July 9, 2009. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image the same day. The thickest plume of dust appears to arise near the shore, and blows toward the northeast. Thinner dust plumes blow toward the southeast, just missing the Saudi Arabian coast. The high-resolution version of this image shows a thin veil of dust extending southeastward over the Red Sea, running almost the entire length of Eritrea’s coast.

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