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A thick veil of dust blew over Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf in early November, 2014. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of the shifting sand on November 4, 2014. The dust plume rises from inland Saudi Arabia and spreads northwestward over the deep blue waters of the Persian Gulf. The island nation of Bahrain is also covered with a light wash of tan dust. The skies over Oman, further south, and Kuwait, to the north are clear. While the point source of the entire sandstorm is not clear, it likely arises from the desert known as the Rub'al Khali, or the Empty Quarter. Covering parts of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, the desert holds half as much sand as the entire Sahara Desert and is the source of frequent dust storms over the Arabian Peninsula. |
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