English: Unsettled winds carried an unusually large amount of Saharan dust across the Mediterranean Sea in late January and early February, 2015. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA�s Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of part of the event on January 31.

A cyclone passing over Africa�s Atlas Mountains, which are found west of this image, as well as the trailing cold front associated with the storm, caused intensely strong uplift over the Saharan region. This picked up large amounts of sand and dust and drove it to the northwest, reaching as far as Greece and Turkey by February 1.

In this image, heavy clouds � likely from the cyclonic storm � stretch across the northern section of the image. Heavy bands of rippling tan dust can be seen rising from the leading edge of the clouds hanging over Algeria. Another plume of dust rises from the Tunisia/Libya border.