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Gobi Dust Storm
| Title |
Gobi Dust Storm |
| Description |
In early and mid-April 2006, waves of dust washed out of the Gobi Desert and spread across eastern China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. According to news reports, a dust storm that hit South Korea [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13484 ] over the weekend of April 8 was the worst the country had seen in four years. This pair of images shows a massive wave of dust that blew out of deserts in north-central China on April 10, 2006. The top image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov ] on April 7, 2006, shows the landscape of north-central China, including two large, sandy deserts that are part of the Gobi Desert region. Just a few days later, an image from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov ] satellite shows that the area was completely hidden by a wave of bright dust that reached beyond the Yellow River. Gobi dust is whipped eastward with prevailing winds by spring storms and can spread all the way to the United States. The storms can be hazardous to public health both in terms of air quality and visibility. In addition, the dust storms can devastate croplands and contaminate sensitive electronic equipment. Dust storms in China are on the rise, probably as a result of land degradation, such as deforestation and overgrazing, and drought. The Chinese government has undertaken a large reforestation effort to combat the spread of deserts and to mitigate the effects of dust storms, particularly around urban areas such as Beijing. The large images above are provided at MODIS' maximum spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides daily images [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?FAS_China3 ] of this area of China in a variety of formats and resolutions. NASA images courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] at NASA GSFC. |
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Gobi Dust Storm
| Title |
Gobi Dust Storm |
| Description |
In early and mid-April 2006, waves of dust washed out of the Gobi Desert and spread across eastern China, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. According to news reports, a dust storm that hit South Korea [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13484 ] over the weekend of April 8 was the worst the country had seen in four years. This pair of images shows a massive wave of dust that blew out of deserts in north-central China on April 10, 2006. The top image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov ] on April 7, 2006, shows the landscape of north-central China, including two large, sandy deserts that are part of the Gobi Desert region. Just a few days later, an image from the MODIS sensor on the Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov ] satellite shows that the area was completely hidden by a wave of bright dust that reached beyond the Yellow River. Gobi dust is whipped eastward with prevailing winds by spring storms and can spread all the way to the United States. The storms can be hazardous to public health both in terms of air quality and visibility. In addition, the dust storms can devastate croplands and contaminate sensitive electronic equipment. Dust storms in China are on the rise, probably as a result of land degradation, such as deforestation and overgrazing, and drought. The Chinese government has undertaken a large reforestation effort to combat the spread of deserts and to mitigate the effects of dust storms, particularly around urban areas such as Beijing. The large images above are provided at MODIS' maximum spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides daily images [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?FAS_China3 ] of this area of China in a variety of formats and resolutions. NASA images courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] at NASA GSFC. |
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Dust and Smog in Northeast C
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| Title |
Dust and Smog in Northeast China |
| Description |
Much of the land surface is obscured in this oblique image of the North China Plain and parts of Inner Mongolia. In this image, a mass of gray smog—mainly industrial pollution and smoke from domestic burning—obscures Beijing and surrounding cities. Numerous plumes with their source points appear within the mass. Beijing suffers some of the worst air pollution in the world from these chronic sources, and the characteristic colors and textures of the smog can be easily seen through the windows of the International Space Station. The pale brown material in Bo Hai Bay, about 300 kilometers east of Beijing, is sediment from the Yellow River and other rivers. Separated from the smog mass by a band of puffy, white cumulus clouds is a light brown plume of dust. The line of white clouds has developed along the steep slope that separates the heavily populated North China Plain—the location of the largest population concentration on Earth—and the sparsely populated semi-desert plains of Inner Mongolia. Most Northern Hemisphere deserts saw dust storms in the spring of 2006, and the Gobi and Taklimakan Deserts of western China were no exception. Dust plumes originating in these deserts typically extend hundreds of kilometers eastward, regularly depositing dust on Beijing, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan. Some plumes even extend over the Pacific Ocean. In extreme cases, visible masses of Gobi-derived dust have reached North America. An astronaut handheld-camera image taken in 1996 shows a broad corridor of smog moving off the mainland out into the Pacific Ocean from China's more southerly population center near Taiwan. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=15295 ] Astronaut photograph ISS013-E-21250 [ http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS012&roll=E&frame=21250 ] was acquired March 2, 2006, with a Kodak 760C digital camera using a 50 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Group, Johnson Space Center. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program [ http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/home/index.html ] supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. [ http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ ] |
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Dust Over Japan
| Title |
Dust Over Japan |
| Description |
Something more than clouds hovered over Japan on April 18, 2006. Dust filled the skies as well. The dust traveled to the island nation from the Gobi Desert. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] flying onboard the Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite took this picture on April 18. In this image, the eastward-moving, tan dust mingles with white clouds. An especially thick plume of dust heads toward the Korean Peninsula and the island of Japan from the west coast of China. The same day this picture was taken, Japan's Meteorological Agency announced that the dust storm reached Tokyo, the first such weather event in that city in six years. The agency predicted reduced visibility but no health hazards. Research results published in 2005, however, suggested that dust storms may carry bacteria from China to Japan. If the Japanese hoped others could understand the frustrations this dust storm caused, they needed to look no further than Beijing. Spring is the season for Gobi Dust storms, but this storm appeared to be unusually hard on China's citizens. According to news reports, it was the worst in five years, dumping some 300,000 tons of dust on Beijing. It was also the second dust storm to hit that city in a week. According to some reports, Chinese officials planned to seed clouds in hopes of bringing some relief. In 2005, a Nature paper examined China's changing environment. Partially worsened by human actions such as overgrazing and grassland degradation, dust storms began to increase in the 20th century. Between AD 300 and 1949, northwestern China saw a dust storm on average every 31 years. After 1990, the average jumped to one such storm per year. According to news reports, at the time this storm hit, the average rate of dust storms for the Beijing region (in northeastern China) was five or six a year. This storm was the eighth to hit the region in 2006. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC. [ http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ] |
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Dust Storm over Eastern Chin
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| Title |
Dust Storm over Eastern China |
| Description |
A large dust storm spread aerosols (airborne particles) over Asia and the Pacific starting on March 9, 2006. The storm reached the Beijing region [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13404 ] on March 10, and the tiny particles remained aloft for several more days. The dust cloud remained intense as it migrated eastward from China over Korea and Japan. The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) [ http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/instruments/omi/index.html ] flying onboard the Aura [ http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html ] satellite captured these images on March 9, 11, and 13. These false-color images show the thickness of dust, smoke, or pollution in the atmosphere. The most intense regions of aerosols appear in bright red. As the images indicate, the aerosols from the dust storm over eastern China remained thick for days afterwards. Not all of the aerosols, however, necessarily resulted from the dust storm. The fairly thick aerosols southeast of the dust storm on March 9 probably resulted from pollution [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13405 ]. On March 11, the heavy aerosols in southeast Asia (lower left corner of image) likely resulted from agricultural fires [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13406 ]. The dust in this storm may have originated in the Gobi Desert. In March and April, dust storms in the Gobi can exceed the total number of storms in that region throughout the rest of the year. It is not uncommon for aerosols from these storms to travel around the world. Images courtesy Colin Seftor and Omar Torres, Aura Science Team. |
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Dust and Smog in Northeast C
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
…
Much of the land surface is
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ISS012-E-21250
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2006-03-02 |
| creator |
NASA -- Astronaut photograph eol.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/sseop/photo.pl?mission=ISS012&roll=E&frame=21250 ISS013-E-21250 was acquired March 2, 2006, with a Kodak 760C digital camera using a 50 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Group, Johnson Space Center. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The spaceflight.nasa.gov/home/index.html International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. |
| identifier |
ISS012-E-21250 |
|
Dust Storm over Eastern Chin
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
…
A large dust storm spread ae
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asia_omi_2006072
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2006-03-09 |
| creator |
NASA -- Images courtesy Colin Seftor and Omar Torres, Aura Science Team. |
| identifier |
asia_omi_2006072 |
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Dust Storm Spreads Out of Go
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
…
In early and mid-April 2006,
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China_dust.TMO2006097
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2006-04-10 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA images courtesy the rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. |
| identifier |
China_dust.TMO2006097 |
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Dust Storm Spreads Out of Go
…
nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
…
In early and mid-April 2006,
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China_dust.TMO2006097
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2006-04-10 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA images courtesy the rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. |
| identifier |
China_dust.TMO2006097 |
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Dust over Japan: Image of th
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
…
Something more than clouds h
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japan_tmo_2006108
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2006-04-18 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC. |
| identifier |
japan_tmo_2006108 |
|
| General Description |
International Space Station Imagery |
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