Saharan dust blew off the west coast of Africa and over Cape Verde on July 12, 2009, as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite passed overhead.
In this true-color image, a thin veil of gray-beige dust sweeps over the Atlantic Ocean, mingling with clouds over the Cape Verde archipelago. Origins of the dust plume aren’t obvious in this image, and the dust may have traveled from hundreds of kilometers inland, carried by a warm, dry air layer.
A pale area of ocean in the lower right quadrant of this image might, at first glance, appear to be a dust plume, but this is sunglint caused by the reflection of sunlight on the water’s surface.
NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Michon Scott.
