How was the huge Iraq dust storm seen from space?”
A giant dust storm that has raged through Iraq and other Middle East countries for more than a week has been imaged by satellite. Many Iraqis considered the storm to be the worst in living memory, according to news reports. Hundreds of people reported to the hospital for respiratory distress, and the blowing dust interfered with travel by air and on land. The new picture, released today, comes from NASA’s Aqua satellite. It shows the region at the height of the storm July 5. Dust is known to lift off continents and migrate across oceans. Desert-dust storms whip up and disperse an estimated 2.4 billion tons of soil and dried sediment throughout the Earth’s atmosphere annually, scientists estimate. Each gram of dust contains up to a billion bacterial cells, too. As one example of the global circulation, dust and bacteria can lift off the Sahara Desert in Africa and end up in Florida. On the plus side, dust storms are known to bring much-needed iron to ocean plants. On the downside, dust
Article from LiveScience Huge Iraq Dust Storm Seen From Space By LiveScience Staff posted: 07 July 2009 12:41 pm ET A giant dust storm that has raged through Iraq and other Middle East countries for more than a week has been imaged by satellite. Many Iraqis considered the storm to be the worst in living memory, according to news reports. Hundreds of people reported to the hospital for respiratory distress, and the blowing dust interfered with travel by air and on land. The new picture, released today, comes from NASA’s Aqua satellite. It shows the region at the height of the storm July 5. Dust is known to lift off continents and migrate across oceans. Desert-dust storms whip up and disperse an estimated 2.4 billion tons of soil and dried sediment throughout the Earth’s atmosphere annually, scientists estimate. Each gram of dust contains up to a billion bacterial cells, too. As one example of the global circulation, dust and bacteria can lift off the Sahara Desert in Africa and end up i
