Dust storm over the Red Sea

On either side of the Red Sea, the Sahara Desert and the Arabian Peninsula rank among the world’s most prolific dust-producing regions. The dust in this image bellow is originated in northeastern Africa, where a network of impermanent rivers has created fine sediments that can be easily lofted into the air. Over Sudan, the dust blended with the land surface below, discernible only by its fuzzy outline. Dust was thick immediately off the Sudan coast, but thinned slightly toward the southeast.

On September 1, 2012, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image of a dust plume blowing over the Red Sea. Sudan is the country on the west of the Red Sea, and Saudi Arabia lies to the east.