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Dust blew over parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran in mid-July 2011. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on July 15, 2011.
The thickest dust occurs in western Afghanistan, just north of the Pakistan border. Thinner plumes spread southward into western Pakistan. Source points for at least some of the dust appear along the Afghanistan-Iran border, where impermanent lakes give rise to fine sediments. Once airborne, the dust plumes may have picked up additional material from the sand seas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

NASA image courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.

Instrument: Aqua – MODIS – NASA