The mingling of winds and deserts often leads to dust storms. But winds do more than stir up the land surface; they also generate waves in the water. In a shallow water body such as the Persian Gulf, wind-driven waves can reach down to perturb the sea floor.
This was the likely sequence of events that occurred in early December 2011, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured the three natural-color images.
This image, from December 10, 2011, shows dust plumes blowing across Syria and Iraq. Arising from discrete points, the dust blows in a large arc. Over Syria, skies are mostly clear, but across the Iraq border, the dust thickens enough to hide the Euphrates River. The dust arcs around a cloudbank, which may be associated with the same weather system that led to the dust storm.
