Pollution over China

  • Credit

    Image courtesy the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE

The MODIS sensor aboard NASA's Aqua satellite observed a heavy, gray pall of haze over Eastern China on Feb. 19, 2003.

Today’s Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) image of eastern Asia again shows a dense blanket of polluted air over central eastern China — dense enough that the coastline around Shanghai is hard to see. In this scene, the pollution (dark gray pixels) is easy to distinguish from the clouds (bright white pixels).

Note that some topographic shading was added to this image to show how the haze sometimes is contained within lower lying areas as well as the valleys between mountains. Terra MOPITT data acquired in early January 2003 show relatively high levels of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere over this same region.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    OrbView-2/SeaWiFS

  • Start Date

    2003-01-10

  • Event Start Date

    2002-11-21

  • NH Image ID

    5331

  • NH Event ID

    5171

  • NH Posting Date

    2003-01-10