A blur of thin clouds stretches over the western edge of the Taklimakan Desert in western China, while swaths of pale dust span the center and far eastern corner of the desert in this image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite from March 31, 2006. The rugged mountains that line the basin are snow-covered, but the dust storm itself is a sign of spring, when such events are most common. Dust storms from the Taklimakan and Gobi Deserts spread over large parts of Asia and cause health and transportation problems as far away as Korea and Japan.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, usind data provided courtesy of the MODIS Rapid Response team.
