February 18, 2021 - Sweeping Saharan Dust Storm

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   Saharan dust
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   Strong winds blowing across northern Africa created a sweeping storm of
   sand and dust in mid-February 2021. The Moderate Resolution Imaging
   Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a
   true-color image of a massive mobilization of Saharan dust on February
   16. The image is a mosaic, with data from three different passes of the
   satellite over Africa stitched together to give a broad view of the
   region. The dark areas are created by lack of data collection at the
   edge of the satellite swaths and due to projection of a curved Earth
   surface onto a flat image.

   Plumes of camel-color dust rise as far inland as Libya and Chad and
   blow westward, joining more rising dust until the shifting sand
   completely blankets the skies over Mauritania, southern Morocco, and
   northern Senegal. The leading edge of the massive dust cloud extends
   about 500 miles (805 km) off the African coast to completely obscure
   part of the North Atlantic Ocean from view. Thick swirls of dust also
   hang over the Canary Islands.

   The total length of shifting sand, measured from the first major plumes
   of inland to the leading edge of dust over the Atlantic, comes in at
   about 2,600 miles (4,180 km). For comparison, the approximate maximum
   width of the African Continent, from east to west, is 4,600 miles
   (7,400 km) and the distance from the coast of Senegal (Africa) to the
   coast of Brazil (South America) is only about 1,600 miles (2,575 km).

   By February 15, the leading edge of the dust appeared to be extending
   further across the Atlantic Ocean, moving toward South America. Every
   year, about 800 million tons of dust is picked up by the wind from
   deserts in North Africa and blown across the Atlantic Ocean, traveling
   to the Amazon River Basin in South America, beaches in the Caribbean
   and, in part, into the air in North and South America.

   Image Facts
   Satellite:  Terra
   Date Acquired: 12/16/2021
   Resolutions:  1km (2.5 MB),
   Bands Used:
   Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-02-18
 
