December 4, 2021 - Color around Hainan Island, China

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Hainan, China
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Hainan Island has been called “China’s largest tropical island”, thanks
to its wealth of warm weather and sandy beaches. Sitting south of
Guangdong Province on China’s mainland, Hainan Island measures about
12,700 square miles (32,900 square km) and is the largest island in
Hainan Province. The province itself is made up of about 200 small
islands, which make up only about 3 percent of the land mass. Hainan
Island encompasses the other 97 percent.

On December 3, 2021, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of
Hainan Island. To the north, the island is separated from the Leizhou
Peninsula by the Qiongzhou Strait. The waters of the South China Sea
surround the rest of Hainan.

Dramatic swirls of tans, greens, and blues stain the waters off the
southern coast of the mainland and off of Hainan Island. The color
appears to come primarily from sediment, which has been washed into the
South China Sea from the land or spilled into it from the many rivers
that feed into the Sea. Sediment appears a muddy tan when it floats at
the surface, most typically near shorelines, which can be seen in this
image. As sediment sinks and disperses, the reflectivity changes so the
color as seen from above also changes, first to green and then to
shades of blue. It is possible that some color may also come from
blooms of floating, plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton.

Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 12/3/2021
Resolutions: 1km (263.7 KB), 500m (690.6 KB), 250m (413.6
KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-12-04

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