December 18, 2014 - Dust and fires in central Africa

Dust and fires in central Africa

Swirls and streams of dust, along with the heat of hundreds of fires greeted NASA’s Terra satellite on December 14, 2014 as it flew over central Africa. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying aboard captured this true-color image of the scene at 09:15 UTC (10:25 a.m. West Africa Time).

A broad stream of thick, creamy dust blows across central Chad from northeast to southwest, spreading thinly over Lake Chad, where the green color gives clear evidence of plant growth in an otherwise arid region. To the southwest of Lake Chad swirling dust hangs over northeastern Nigeria and Cameroon.

Actively burning fires, probably agricultural considering the location and time of year, are scattered across the southern part of the image, veiling the landscape with thin, gray smoke. The red hotspots, each marking an area where the thermal bands on the MODIS instrument detected high temperatures, are clustered most thickly in southeastern Chad and in the Central African Republic.

Although Lake Chad looks more like a large oasis than a deep blue lake, it was once a much larger lake. Between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago water filled a large basin, bringing the lake’s surface area as much as 120 meters (~ 400 feet) higher above sea level that today’s lake surface. The former lake bed which now surrounds Lake Chad is called the Bodele Depression and is famous as one of the largest single sources of wind-blown dust in the world.

Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 12/14/2014
Resolutions: 1km ( B), 500m ( B), 250m ( B)
Bands Used: 1, 4, 3
Image Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC