On November 6, 2011, a dust plume stretched from southeastern Turkmenistan to northern Afghanistan. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image the same day.
Vegetation lines river valleys, visible north of the dust plume, but overall, this region is arid. The dust plume, which ranges in color from beige to tan, is thick enough in some places to completely hide the land surface below. Source points for the dust are not obvious in this image, but sand seas sprawl over much of Turkmenistan, and extend across the Afghanistan border.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott. Instrument: Aqua - MODIS
