Dust over the Arabian Sea

Dust over the Arabian Sea On October 26, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra satellite flew over the Arabian Sea and captured a true-color image of tan dust blowing off the coast of Iran and Pakistan.

October is a month of transition for weather patterns over the Arabian Sea. In the summer, winds predominantly blow from the sea towards land. In the winter, the winds reverse and blow over the Arabian Sea from the northeast. During October, between the summer and winter monsoons, the prevailing wind direction varies.

In this image, Iran lies in the west and Pakistan in the east. The northeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula lies in the southwest, across the Arabian Sea. Greenish coloration in the Arabian Sea may be caused by sediment in the water, or by phytoplankton blooming in the waters – or likely a combination of the two.Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the world’s fifth-most populous country with a population exceeding 212.2 million. It has the world’s second-largest Muslim population. It is the 33rd-largest country by area, spanning 881,913 square kilometres. Pakistan has a 1,046-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is separated narrowly from Tajikistan by Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor in the northwest, and also shares a maritime border with Oman.

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Credit: NASA