The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) captured these views of
the dust and sand that swept over northeast China on March 10, 2004.
Information on the height of the dust and an indication of the probable
dust source region are provided by these images, which include a
natural-color snapshot from MISR's nadir camera (left), a
stereoscopically-retrieved height field (center) and a map of terrain
elevation (right).
The dust appears in the natural-color image as the pale brownish ripples
that traverse the image from Inner Mongolia toward the southeast, over
Beijing, Liaoning and Jilin Provinces. MISR's stereoscopic feature matching
algorithm retrieves height above the surface where there is sufficient
spatial contrast between several view angles. When the stereo matcher
determines that a location is not covered by a feature above the surface,
the terrain elevation data are displayed instead. The surface elevation map
at right shows that the eastern portion of the image area, Liaonang and
Jilin Provinces, is mostly low, flat terrain. These are the areas where the
dust appears to be thickest and where the stereo height field indicates
that the tops of the dust attain heights of up to about 1500 meters above
the surface terrain. Clouds are situated between about 1 and 4 kilometers
above the surface. The retrieved heights shown here are uncorrected for
wind effects. The square-shaped area near the center of the stereo map is
an artifact of the data processing. Areas where height could not be
retrieved are shown in dark grey.
A decrease in spring vegetation coverage in central and eastern Inner
Mongolia has been suggested to be a major contributor to spring dust storms
over northern China.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003JD003913.shtml
The Multiangle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth
continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees
north and 82 degrees south latitude. These data products were generated
from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbit 22481. The
panels cover an area of 380 kilometers x 685 kilometers, and utilize data
from blocks 54 to 58 within World Reference System-2 path 121.
MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra
satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.