Meteosat images ilustrating, from space, the massive desert dust transport occurring over Europe from 15 March 2022
The animation presents RGB image composites from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard Meteosat satellite, tailored to monitor the evolution of dust storms over deserts during both day and night. This type of RGB composition exploit the difference in emissivity of dust and desert surfaces. In addition, during daytime, it exploits the temperature difference between the hot desert surface and the cooler dust cloud and it is very useful to discriminate not only desert dust transport, but also low, mid and high-level clouds. It uses spectral channels
| Information extracted | Corresponding color |
|---|---|
| Desert dust transport | Magenta |
| Low-level clouds (cold atmosphere) | Greenish-yellowish |
| Low-level clouds (warm atmosphere) | Purple |
| Thick mid-level clouds | Brownish |
| Thin mid-level clouds | Dark greenish |
| Thick ice clouds | Dark reddish |
| Thin ice clouds | Black |
