Floods struck northeastern Syria in late April 2011. The country’s state-run news agency reported that 26 villages were flooded and five children, all from one family, died in the floods. The news agency also reported that the high waters apparently originated in Iraq.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured these false-color images of northeastern Syria and northwestern Iraq in April 2011. The top image is from April 26, and the bottom image is from April 16.
Both images use a combination of visible and infrared light to increase the contrast between water and land. Water ranges from electric blue to navy. Vegetation is green. Bare ground is pink-beige. Clouds are blue-green, and some of them cast dark shadows onto the land surface below. Areas of standing water—not visible 10 days earlier—appear on April 26. A long, thin line of standing water runs east-west near the top edge of the image. Large pools of standing water also appear east of the confluence of the Nahr al Khabur and Euphrates Rivers.
- The Flood Observatory. Current Events. Accessed April 27, 2011.
NASA images courtesy MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.
- Aqua - MODIS