Dust from the Sahara drifted northward across the Mediterranean Sea toward Greece in early November 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on November 10.
A large plume extends hundreds of kilometers northeastward across the ocean, running roughly parallel to Italy’s southern coast. In the east, a smaller plume blows north, skirting the island of Kriti (Crete). Both plumes reach the Greek islands, where the airborne dust is thick enough to obscure the land and water surface below.
Isolated red dots appear in Kriti and Greece, indicating hotspots where MODIS has detected unusually high surface temperatures, most likely from fires.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.
