Dust storm off West Africa

A veil of light yellow dust hangs over Cape Verde Islands and the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of north Africa. The winds that blew this dust out of the Sahara Desert were abating on May 19, 2005, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image, and the dust seen here is much lighter than it was a few days earlier. In the top of the image, the clouds are arranged in fanciful swirls. These swirls trace out the eddies that were created when air passed over the Canary Islands, beyond the northern edge of the image.

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Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

Published May 20, 2005
Data acquired May 19, 2005

Source:

Aqua > MODIS

Collections:

MODIS Rapid Response

Visible Earth