Dust and Smoke off the West Coast of Africa

Dust and Smoke off the West Coast of Africa

Dust and smoke mixed over the Atlantic as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite took this picture on July 28, 2007.

In this image, a beige dust plume hundreds of kilometers long blows off the west coast of Africa in a clockwise direction, toward the northwest. West of that plume is another, lighter plume, which may consist of dust or some combination of dust and smoke. As the dust blows off the Sahara, a plume of pale gray smoke blows off Gran Canaria, also curving toward the northwest. While the smoke largely skirts Tenerife, it heads straight for San Sebastián and Santa Cruz.

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center