Skip to content

Watch: Saharan Dust Cloud Covers the Atlantic

The NOAA visualization below depicts a giant plume of dust moving off the coast of Africa. 
Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.

The NOAA visualization below depicts a giant plume of dust moving off the coast of Africa. This plume, captured by NOAA’s satellites, is known as the Saharan Air Layer, and is actually a quite common occurrence in which, according to NOAA, “a layer of tiny aerosols like sand, dirt and dust occasionally push from east to west across the tropical Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season.”

This animation uses the NOAA NGAC aerosol model to show how the plume is expected to travel across the Atlantic Basin over the next four days. 

Sign up for Big Think on Substack
The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free.
Related
A bearded man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt speaks with a microphone clipped to his collar in front of a purple background with white dots.
The Well
How Rainn Wilson discovered sacredness
The hospital where Rainn Wilson’s wife and son nearly died became his own personal holy site. There, he discovered that the sacred can exist in places we least expect it. During his talk at A Night of Awe and Wonder, he explained how the awe we feel in moments of courage and love is moral beauty — and following it might be the start of our spiritual revolution.
▸
13 min
—
with
Rainn Wilson
Up Next