NASA Captures Massive Dust Plume Over Mediterranean Sea (PHOTOS)

As protests continue to rock North Africa, heavy winter winds are also kicking up huge dust storms.

On Wednesday, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite captured a photo of a massive dust plume over the Mediterranean Sea. The cloud of debris spans hundreds of miles--from the coast of Egypt, slightly west of the Nile River delta, all the way to Crete.

Though the source of the plume is not apparent from the photograph, NASA believes it to be a result of huge dust storms that occurred recently over Egypt and Libya.

Take a look at the dust plume in the natural-color photo (below), and scroll down further to see the storm that may have caused it. Then, look through our slideshow of the world's most severe snowstorms seen from space.

DUST PLUME AS SEEN ON FEBRUARY 23:

DUST STORM OVER EGYPT AND LIBYA ON FEBRUARY 19:

Comments

[neige]

07:39 AM on 02/25/2011

God?

[GSR]

10:52 PM on 02/24/2011

It's up there in the sky
in that dust cloud by and by
My Oklahoma Home is blown away
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-HYHrm_oE

[Joeltron]

08:39 PM on 02/24/2011

maybe it was HAARP?

[nailinpalinnow]

07:40 PM on 02/24/2011

I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see

Now Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hzv0TSSDgU

[ThEbor]

06:48 PM on 02/24/2011

So that how Crete was formed!

[YankeeCanuck]

06:43 PM on 02/24/2011

Hundreds of thousands of "90-pound weaklings" kicking sand in the bullies' faces.

[WADRGFY]

05:34 PM on 02/24/2011

With all due respect, NASA has it wrong...that's just more hot air being released by Newt Gingrich.

[undsoweiter]

05:28 PM on 02/24/2011

Amazing pictures. Note the nucleation at the northern end of streamer in pic.1.

[infinity]

08:05 PM on 02/24/2011

"nucleation"? what is that?

[undsoweiter]

09:22 PM on 02/24/2011

I may be wrong in this case. Nucleation is the process by which water vapor forms droplets around dust particles, producing clouds. This is the driving force in the formation of hurricanes in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa. Again, Sahara dust.
So I'm referring to that large body of heavy cloud at the northern extremity of the plume.

[Demitasse]

05:03 PM on 02/24/2011

Dust plumes in the Mediterranean, Asian Brown Cloud in South Asia:

The Asian brown cloud is a layer of air pollution that covers parts of South Asia, namely the northern Indian Ocean, India, and Pakistan. Viewed from satellite photos, the cloud appears as a giant brown stain hanging in the air over much of South Asia and the Indian Ocean every year between January and March, possibly also during earlier and later months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_brown_cloud

[undsoweiter]

05:26 PM on 02/24/2011

Clean coal technology?

[OB-GYN]

05:31 PM on 02/24/2011

Thanks for the wikipedia.org link, Demitasse. It serves its purpose of educating (hopefully with best knowledge posters and back up citations). I enjoy reading wikipedia, and support it too.

[neuromancer2010]

05:59 PM on 02/24/2011

Wikipedia can be useful, but it can also be a pain in the hiney and grossly inaccurate when certain topics get taken over by bullies who think they are right about a given topic, but are completely wrong. The New Yorker:

"In a practical, immediate way, one sees the limits of the so-called “extended mind” clearly in the mob-made Wikipedia, the perfect product of that new vast, supersized cognition: when there’s easy agreement, it’s fine, and when there’s widespread disagreement on values or facts, as with, say, the origins of capitalism, it’s fine, too; you get both sides. The trouble comes when one side is right and the other side is wrong and doesn’t know it. The Shakespeare authorship page and the Shroud of Turin page are scenes of constant conflict and are packed with unreliable information. Creationists crowd cyberspace every bit as effectively as evolutionists, and extend their minds just as fully. Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that."

[Opening Shares]

04:39 PM on 02/24/2011

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Sometimes Google ads are funnier and more relevant than the comment posts.

[VoiceOmmAfar]

04:38 PM on 02/24/2011

Of course, it to be a result of huge storms that occurred recently over Egypt and Libya! It is the Mubarak & Ghadafi's debris.

[ersf]

04:08 PM on 02/24/2011

I guess natural phenomena seen for the first time by some 700 Club member might take this as a Sign... of, you know... I don't want to say it. Can we stop sensationalizing this very typical type of climate condition in the Med Sea.

[undsoweiter]

05:12 PM on 02/24/2011

So there's not a monster under the bed?

[Kache]

07:13 PM on 02/24/2011

True! Every year Venezuela has similar dust storms. From the Amazon? No, from the Sahara! Dust from the Sahara lands as far north as Oklahoma annually. It's a freakin desert out there!

[OpposingViewpoint]

03:56 PM on 02/24/2011

Why is anyone surprised and where the heck has NASA been? Almost everyone in the world knows there has been a major dust-up in that region of the world for weeks now. Come on guys, this is the information age.

[AJH]

04:36 PM on 02/24/2011

I think the surprise is it's not rising off africa heading over the middle eqast to hit mongolia intensifying with pollution mercury, carbon black etc over china and taking the jetstream express for the pacific coast of the USA.

A cool demonstration of global atmospheric transport nonetheless.

[JonShank]

03:52 PM on 02/24/2011

Can't they do something about this? Think of the children!

[undsoweiter]

03:54 PM on 02/24/2011

Think of the laundry!

[JonShank]

04:42 PM on 02/24/2011

Thank you! That's what I meant... I misspelled Laundry... AGAIN.

Must be why when I ask my wife to pick up my shirts she comes home with strange children.

[Mplsuptown]

03:49 PM on 02/24/2011

I remember how often I'd be sitting in the cockpit of the plane I used to fly in and whenever we'd be landing in Riyadh you couldn't see what was under the layer of dust but whenever you were on the ground looking up the sky always seems so clear.