Dust blew across Iraq, Syria, and Turkey on May 21, 2009. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this true-color image the same day, around 11:30 a.m. local time (8:30 UTC).
Source points for the dust plumes are not obvious in this image, but the thicker appearance of the dust in the northwest suggests that it may have arisen from the fine sediments of the Tigris and Euphrates floodplains in Iraq and blown toward the northwest from there. Over Turkey, the dust appears to mingle with clouds.
NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
