Dust of West Africa

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Dust from Africa was still blowing westward on May 1, 2012. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this natural-color image the same day.

A band of especially thick dust blew off the coast of Guinea. South of Cape Verde, the dust turned northward, passing over some of the islands in that archipelago. Meanwhile, a haze of dust hung over the entire region, stretching from Senegal and Guinea in the east past Cape Verde in the west. African dust sometimes settles in Cape Verde, and sometimes travels across the Atlantic Ocean to South America and the Caribbean Sea.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE MODIS Rapid Response. Caption by Michon Scott

Instrument:
Aqua - MODIS - NASA