A gray pall of haze and pollution filled the skies over much of northern India and Bangladesh on December 1, 2003. Air pollution tends to “pool,” or collect, along the southern edge of the Himalayas, where the mountains are so tall they effectively block the southern air mass from spreading northward over southeastern Asia. This true-color image was acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
Image by Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory, based upon data courtesy the MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC
