"There is massive amounts of dust today in New Mexico and El Paso. But on the satellite I can't easily tell which is dust and which is cloud. Can you run your algorithm today and see if it differentiates them?" - Dr. Thomas Gill
Unfortunately, the algorithm was "trained" or "taught" to discriminate clouds, that is, wherever there is a cloud, don't bother searching for dust. The original premise by some NASA experts and I was that, since my algorithm uses thermal spectral bands near the infra-red spectrum, any cloud would significantly deteriorate the thermal emission of the dust aerosols; in other words: it would mess up the whole algorithm. So anyway, what I am trying to say is that all clouds are "mapped" to black (non-dusty) aerosols.
Below are the results of my algorithm. On the left we have true color images and on the right we have the output of my algorithm; on the first row is shown MODIS-Terra and on the second MODIS-Aqua, 17:35 UTC and 2050 UTC, respectively.
This dust storm was classified as "severe" and it is probably the worst in the last five years. Here is the full overpass of MODIS-Terra and my algorithm's output...
This is the GOES East animation of the event; as you can see, there is a large number of clouds moving over the area of the incident, making almost impossible to analyze using traditional infra-red imagery.
Finally, here are some pictures of friends and videos uploaded by other people.
El Paso, TX...
Las Cruces, NM...
Albuquerque, NM...
Wow, right?
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