Summary

Description	In June 2020, a "Godzilla" dust plume travelled from the Sahara, the planet’s largest, hottest desert, across the Atlantic ocean to North America. Saharan dust plumes are a natural phenomenon and occur especially during the summertime, due to dust uplift from low level jets and haboobs. This particular event was nicknamed "Godzilla" dust plume, because of its huge extent and massive amount of dust transport - the most intense episode over the past two decades. The data visualizations included on this webpage track the "Godzilla" dust plume by featuring near real-time VIIRS Corrected Reflectance (True Color) daily imagery for the month of June 2020. The first visualization listed on this webpage showcases the trans-Atlantic transport of the dust plume, while the second visualization showcases the formation of the dust plume as seen from West Africa. The Sahara Desert is 3,600,000 square miles (9,200,000 square kilometers) of arid land stretched across the northern half of Africa, coming
Date	2021-04-19
Source	commons.wikimedia.org
Author	NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Licensing

CC0 / Public Domain

Attribution: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, 2021-04-19