December 5, 2021 - Lake Chad surrounded by Dust
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Strong winds surrounded Lake Chad with dust from the Sahara Desert in
early December 2021. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of
the sandy scene on December 2.
A butterfly-shaped swath of green near the center marks the current
limits of Lake Chad. Once an expansive sea, Lake Chad has been steadily
shrinking. By the 1960s, the sea had very slowly regressed to simply a
large freshwater lake, but since that time the speed of shrinkage has
been rapid. Today the lake spans less than one-tenth of the area it
covered in the 1960s, yet it supports more than 30 million people in
four countries, including agriculture, fishing, animals, and economic
activity. The countries that share Lake Chad, from north and moving
clockwise, are Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger.
A thick plume of light-colored dust sweeps over a large part of Chad,
north of Lake Chad. It is so thick that the ground is obscured from
view. To the south and southwest of the lake, the dust has broadened
and thinned, creating a fan over 900 km (560 mi) wide. Dust storms are
common year-round in this area and are a major hazard for both people
and animals.
Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 12/2/2021
Resolutions: 1km (600.6 KB), 500m (1.5 MB), 250m (742.5 KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-12-05
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