Canary Island Group and von Karman Cloud Vortices.

STS040-75-003 (5-14 June 1991) --- This image shows several of the Canary Islands, located in the North Atlantic Ocean just west of Africa. Low level stratus clouds often form here (and along the west coast of continents at these latitudes) are trapped in vertical movement due to an overlying atmospheric temperature inversion. The islands are generating disturbances in the low-level wind flow which is generally from the north-northeast or from top to bottom in the image. These disturbances travel downstream from the islands and manifest themselves as cloud swirls which are called von Karman vortices. The northern extent of a large dust storm moving off the coast of Africa is apparent at the lower right of the image. The dust, extended across the Atlantic Ocean as far west as the Dominican Republic later in the mission.

Date

1991-06-14

Collection

JSC

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

photograph

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