Dust blew over Iraq, Syria, and Turkey on July 29, 2011. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite took this picture the same day. The dust appears as a tan veil spanning hundreds of kilometers. It extends from Buhayrat ath Tharthar (Lake Tharthar) in the southeast to Turkey in the northwest.
Source points for the dust storm are not apparent in this image, but the dust might have arisen from the fine sediments of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and/or Iraq’s impermanent lakes, and blown from there toward the northwest.
NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
