Saharan dust moving westward across the Atlantic Ocean
Meteosat-9 Saharan Air Layer (SAL) product (click image to play animation)
One of the more pronounced in a series of pulses of Saharan dust moving westward across the Atlantic Ocean was seen during the 14 July – 16 July 2012 time period. The Meteorsat-9 “split window” Saharan Air Layer (SAL) tracking product (above; click image to play animation) displayed a very strong signal of a large area of SAL dust (yellow to orange to dark red color enhancement) approaching the Lesser Antilles and the Greater Antilles islands of the West Indies.
The hazy signature of the dust cloud was also seen during the daytime hours on Meteosat-9 pseudo-natural color images Red/Green/Blue (RGB) images (below; click image to play animation). A large area of sun glint was prominent over the middle Atlantic Ocean on the 18:00 UTC images, but the dust cloud could always been seen to the west of the sun glint.
Meteosat-9 pseudo natural color imagery product (click image to play animation)