Dust over the Red Sea

Credit: Credit: Jeff Schmaltz; MODIS team; NASA, Posted on: Saturday, 26 June 2004, 06:00 CDT Download full size image

On June 16, 2004, a huge plume of dust blew out of the deserts of Sudan and Eritrea and over the southern Red Sea. The plume, which grew dramatically in size over the course of a few hours, is shown here in it's later stage as sen by the Aqua MODIS instrument. The earlier Terra MODIS image (roll over the image to make it visible) shows a much more compact, almost completely opaque plume. The bulk of the plume narrowly missed covering Port Sudan, which lies about halfway up the vertical strip of coastline. It also missed covering the Dahlak Archipelago by a much greater margin, though a thin veil of dust still managed to reach that far. This archipelago is visible at the bottom right corner of the image. It has been known since Roman times as a source of pearls.

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