NASA Satellite Captures Late-Season Dust Storm Over Mali

As summer winds down in West Africa, so does much of the region's dust activity. Dust storms can still occur, though, as one did in early September 2026, when a plume covered parts of Mali and neighboring countries. The MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the event on September 5, 2026, released by NASA's Earth Observatory.

According to Tianle Yuan, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, storms like this one are often associated with haboobs, powerful dust storms driven by strong convective winds. In the days after the image was acquired, a wider satellite view showed aerosols from the region moving westward and spilling over the Atlantic Ocean, though a full transatlantic crossing was considered unlikely. Such crossings are more common from late spring through summer, when the Saharan Air Layer, a dry, dusty mass of air, can carry dust thousands of miles westward from Africa, riding high in the atmosphere.

Looking ahead, the developing El Niño could reshape these dust patterns. Yuan noted that the phenomenon can affect dust over the Sahel and Mali by shifting the Intertropical Convergence Zone and altering convection patterns, though the influence cuts both ways. Drier conditions can leave more loose sediment available for winds to lift, but less convective activity also means fewer intense haboobs to kick up large dust plumes in the first place.

"The connection can be real," Yuan said, "but hard to pin down for individual events."