NASA Modis Image: Dust Plumes off Western Africa

large image (2 MB, JPEG) acquired September 15, 2010

Multicolored dust plumes blew off the coast of western Africa in mid-September 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on September 15, 2010. An especially dense, dark plume blows over the Atlantic Ocean just south of the Western Sahara-Mauritania border. Around this plume are thinner, lighter plumes. The dust appears lightest in the north.

The varying colors of the plumes might result from different points of origin, or simply from different densities of dust. Source points for this dust storm aren’t obvious in this image, but sand seas sprawl over most of Mauritania, and the dust could have easily arisen from one or more localities in that country.

Dust clouds such as these can carry anthrax, which is endemic in the African soils, into Europe.