• → European Space Agency

      • Space for Europe
      • Space News
      • Space in Images
      • Space in Videos
    • About Us

      • Welcome to ESA
      • DG's News and Views
      • For Member State Delegations
      • Business with ESA
      • ESA Exhibitions
      • ESA Publications
      • Careers at ESA
    • Our Activities

      • Space News
      • Observing the Earth
      • Human Spaceflight
      • Launchers
      • Navigation
      • Space Science
      • Space Engineering
      • Operations
      • Technology
      • Telecommunications & Integrated Applications
    • For Public

    • For Media

    • For Educators

    • For Kids

    • ESA

    • Observing the Earth

    • Understanding Our Planet

    • Securing Our Environment

    • Benefiting Our Economy

    • About Observing the Earth

      • How does Earth Observation work?
      • How to get Earth observation data
      • Integrating Earth Observation in your job
      • Earth Observation users speak
    • EO programmes
    • The Living Planet
    • GMES
    • ESA's Earth Observing missions
    • Envisat overview
    • ERS overview
    • Earth Explorers overview
    • Sentinels overview
    • MSG overview
    • MetOp overview
    • Proba-1 overview
    • Third Party Missions overview
    • Opportunities with us

      • Education & training
      • International cooperation
      • Milestones & announcements
    • Multimedia

      • Image Gallery
      • Video Gallery
      • Online resources
      • RSS feeds
    • Services
    • Subscribe

    ESA > Our Activities > Observing the Earth

    Satellite captures images of sandstorm

    Sandstorm
    20 March 2012

    ESA’s Envisat satellite has captured images of a sandstorm over Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and southern Iraq and Iran.

    The animation shows two cloud-free images of the region: the first captured on 10 March and the second on 18 March.

    The latest image shows how sand has swept over the Persian Gulf States in recent days, extending some 1500 km north to south.

    Over the past few days, strong winds have whipped up dust and sand, causing low visibility and grounding flights across the region.

    In some areas of Saudi Arabia, schools have been closed and hundreds of people are suffering from respiratory problems. The storm has also caused a sharp decline in temperatures.

    The storm has even disrupted traffic further south in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Yemen.

    These images were captured by Envisat’s MERIS instrument. This month, Envisat celebrated ten years in orbit.

    Rate this

    Views

    Share

    • Currently 0 out of 5 Stars.
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
    Rating: 0/5 (0 votes cast)

    Thank you for rating!

    You have already rated this page, you can only rate it once!

    Your rating has been changed, thanks for rating!

    113
    Tweet
    • Related news
      • Earth from Space: Arid Arabia
      • Related missions
      • Envisat
      • Envisat's 10th birthday

    Connect with us

    • RSS
    • Youtube
    • Twitter
    • Flickr
    • G+
    • Facebook
    • Livestream
    • Subscribe
    • App Store
    • LATEST ARTICLES
    • · ESA astronaut Timothy Peake set fo…
    • · Space drives e-mobility
    • · Proba-V opens its eyes
    • · First new Galileo satellite arrive…
    • · Next destination: space
    • FAQ

    • Jobs at ESA

    • Site Map

    • Contacts

    • Terms and conditions