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Every year strong winds blowing over the Sahara desert lift hundreds of millions of tons of dust high into the sky over North Africa. Depending on the season, the dust may be blown across the Mediterranean Sea into Europe or over the Atlantic Ocean although, carried aloft by trade winds, the heavier particles quickly drop back to earth. Those that survive the journey across the oceans are a hundred times smaller than the diameter of the finest human hair. The dust often reaches the Western Hemisphere, where it fertilizes bromeliads in Brazil, dirties windshields across the Southeastern United States and causes brilliant red sunsets across the American Southwest. The dust normally arrives in the Caribbean by mid- June, and does disappear until the autumn. Islanders see the results most vividly at sunset: the opalescent glow that ordinarily lights the sky in these regions becomes a muddy shade of burnt orange.
The Meteosat-8 images from 3 to 10 March 2004 below show a major dust outbreak from Western Africa across the Atlantic. For the colour interpretation, please click on the interpretation link below the top images. On 3 March 2004, the massive storm formed a huge arc of thick dust that swept over the Canary Islands where it dropped a significant amount of dust. This event was captured by various satellites, including Meteosat-8 and NASA's Terra and Aqua. On 5 March 2004, the dust, still thick and well visible in the satellite images, reached the Cape Verde Islands and the shores of Western Europe. In the following days, the dust crossed the Atlantic Ocean and reached South America and the Caribbean Sea. During this process, the dust got thinner and thinner (smaller dust particles and smaller aerosol optical thickness) making it less visible in the satellite images. However, on 10 March 2004 large amounts of fine dust were still well visible in the area of the Gulf of Guinea.
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