• MODIS Pic of the Day 05 July 2022

    From Dan Richter@1:317/3 to All on Tuesday, July 05, 2022 12:00:42
    July 5, 2022 - Gravity Waves and Dust over the Red Sea

    Gravity Waves
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    Throughout most of the month of June 2022, strong winds carried dust
    from the Sahara Desert over the Red Sea, sometimes creating a heavy
    blanket of airborne dust more than 1,000 km (620 mi) wide. On June 30,
    when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) acquired
    a true-color image of the relentless storms, the dust had thinned. But
    it had also acquired a peculiar appearance, with many parallel lines
    stretching across most of the Red Sea dust.

    These lines were most likely caused by gravity waves in the atmosphere,
    a type of turbulence caused by wind shear. As hot, dusty desert air
    move across the cooler, moist waters of the Red Sea, the lower layers
    of the air are slowed down, causing ripples in the atmosphere. These
    ripples are a lot like waves we can see moving across the surface of a
    lake—undulating up and down to create crests and troughs. The same
    motion often happens in the atmosphere, but waves can’t be seen when
    the air is clear. But when clouds are either cloudy or dusty, the
    gravity waves become visible. In this case, the motion of the air over
    the Red Sea is sorting the dust into bands as the atmosphere rolls
    along with the motion of the wind over the water.

    Image Facts
    Satellite: Aqua
    Date Acquired: 6/30/2022
    Resolutions: 1km (257.5 KB), 500m (620.5 KB), 250m (303.8
    KB)
    Bands Used: 1,4,3
    Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



    https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-07-05

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