Status Report

NASA MODIS Image of the Day: April 20, 2009 – Haze over the Sea of Azov

By SpaceRef Editor
April 20, 2009
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NASA MODIS Image of the Day: April 20, 2009 – Haze over the Sea of Azov
NASA MODIS Image of the Day: April 20, 2009 - Haze over the Sea of Azov

Images

A narrow band of haze formed over the Sea of Azov on April 7, 2009.

The MODIS on NASA’s Aqua satellite took this picture the same day.

The sea of Azov is on the left side of the image, where the haze appears especially thick. It seems to thin toward the east. The thick-looking haze in the west, however, might result in part from that area’s location near the edge of the satellite swath, where the sensor had to look through a thicker layer (longer path) of atmosphere. Throughout this image, red dots indicate hotspots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures, likely resulting from agricultural fires and/or wildfires. The fires likely contribute to the haze, and one example is a fire on the western shore of Tsimlyanskoye Vodokhranilishcho, which sends its smoke eastward. Given the broad distribution of the fires and the narrow band of haze, however, air currents probably play a role in channeling the haze into a fairly narrow east-west band.

SpaceRef staff editor.