File:Dust over Arabian Sea (MODIS 2021-01-26).jpg

English: Dust plumes from Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan streamed over the Arabian Sea in late January 2021, creating a thick blanket of dust that hid the surface of the water from view. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of the scene on January 23.

On January 22, strong winds lifted copious amount of light tan dust and sand from several locations in all three countries. The southward blowing winds began to move the dust over the Arabian Sea on that day. By the next day, a huge blanket of dust stretched more than 600 miles (965 km) southward off the coast, with the western edge reaching Oman. Most of the skies over Oman remained dust-free, however. Additional dust from Pakistan blew over the Gulf of Oman (located in the west).

Dust plumes often arise from the dry lakebed sediments along the border between Iran and Afghanistan. Dust also frequently arises from the sand seas occurring over much of western Pakistan and from the sandy desert that stretches for hundreds of kilometers along the Pakistan-India border. These all appear to be sources for this particular dust storm.