Grímsvötn volcano ash plume drops to five kilometers

Grímsvötn volcano ash plume drops to five kilometers

About 14 months after Eyjafjallajökull rumbled to life, another volcano on Iceland began spewing ash and steam. At approximately 17:30 UTC (5:30 p.m. local time) on May 21, 2011, Grímsvötn began to erupt, the Icelandic Met Office reported. The…

Morganza Floodway after five days of flow

Morganza Floodway after five days of flow

Five days after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened a flood control structure, or spillway, onto the Morganza Floodway, water had spread 15–20 miles (24–32 kilometers) southward across the Louisiana landscape. As of May 18, 2011, a total of 17 bays…

Gobi desert sand and dust storms plague East Asia

Gobi desert sand and dust storms plague East Asia

Fire and Earth blog brings this satellite photo report of massive sandstorms over Gobi desert spreading all over east Asia and Japan. This true-color image of North China Plain, Shandong Peninsula and the Bo Haitaken was taken by MODIS on NASA’s Terra…

Dust storm blows over Sahara desert

Dust storm blows over Sahara desert

 In early May 2011, a dust storm extended at least 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) across the Sahara Desert, according to a NASA statement. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on

Sandstorm moves across Arabian peninsula

Sandstorm moves across Arabian peninsula

A dense wall of dust barreled across the Arabian Peninsula on March 26 – 27, 2011. The massive storm stretches more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) across the peninsula, covering parts of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. This pair of images…

Flooding in Angola and Namibia

Flooding in Angola and Namibia

Heavy rains continued falling throughout parts of southern Africa in mid- and late March 2011. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described flood-affected districts extending from Angola and Mozambique southward to South