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Images of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) from April 19, 2005 and 2005
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Haze Over Eastern United Sta
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Haze Over Eastern United States |
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Haze hung over the U.S. East Coast on April 19, 2005, lowering the air quality in many eastern cities, though none reached the EPA's "Code Red" category?unhealthy?. In a few cities, the levels of ozone and particulate matter 2.5 micrometers in diameter or larger entered the range of orange, which indicates the air could be unhealthy for people in sensitive groups, such as the elderly or people with respiratory conditions like asthma. This image of the area was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA?s Terra satellite and stretches from New York southward to North Carolina, encompassing several large Eastern cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The grayish haze extends outward over the Atlantic Ocean (image right). For more on regional and national air pollution, visit the Environmental Protection Agency?s Air Now [ http://www.epa.gov/airnow/index.html ] Website. To read about how NASA satellite data help air quality forecasters to predict regional air quality, read the feature story A New IDEA in Air Quality Forecasting. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/IDEA/ ] Image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center |
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Dust Storm Blows Across Iraq
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Dust Storm Blows Across Iraq |
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A bright band of dust sweeps down the center of ancient Mesopotamia in this Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) image, collected on April 19, 2005, by NASA's Aqua [ http://aqua.nasa.gov/ ] satellite. The dust is blowing north out of the Syrian Desert in Iraq and Syria. Though the color matches the ground, the airborne dust is brighter and smoother in texture, making it stand out in the image. The dust blankets the land between the Euphrates River on the east and the Tigris River in the west—the region that nurtured some of the earliest human civilizations. Today, a green band of vegetation makes the Euphrates River easy to see in modern Syria. On the right side of the image, the Tigris is also lined in green as it flows through eastern Iraq. MODIS detected three fires to the east of the Tigris, and they are marked with red dots in this image. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] at NASA GSFC. The image is available in additional resolutions. |
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Fires in Mexico and Central
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Fires in Mexico and Central America |
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Fires continued to burn across southern Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, and northern Central America on April 19, 2005. The smoke extends out over the water in both directions: north into the Gulf of Mexico (top), and south over the Pacific Ocean (bottom right). Actively burning fires detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite have been marked in red. An especially intense cluster of fires is burning in northwestern Guatemala, right of image center. The country is suffering from a severe drought that makes normal agricultural burning practices dangerous. In addition, people who are fighting over land in the country set fire to forests as a form of protest or to degrade land in protected forest reserves so that the government will permit salvage logging. This combination of accidental and intentional fire is taking a huge toll on the country's remaining rainforest. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the MODIS Rapid Response team. |
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