File:Water in the Taklimakan Desert (MODIS 2024-09-16).jpg

English: September 13, 2024 April 9, 2024

Located in westernmost China, the Tarim basin holds the biggest, hottest and driest desert in China—the Taklimakan Desert. The tall mountains that almost completely encircle the Tarim Basin include the Tien Shan in the north and the Kunlun Shan in the southeast. For most of the year these mountains block moisture, allowing the central part of the Tarim Basin to receive less than 10 millimeters (0.4 inches) of precipitation each year. This leaves an extremely dry desert and empty riverbeds, both filled with dust that is often blown by moving wind to create huge dust storms.

When topped with melting snow or drenched by heavy precipitation, the same mountains can for a conduit to moisten the desert, shuttling water through rivulets and streams to fill rivers within the Taklimakan Desert. The desert often shows greening from the growth of vegetation in August, when the snow atop the highest peaks have reached peak melt.

In August and September 2024, exceptional rains drenched parts of China, especially Qinghai Province on the southeastern rim of the Tarim Basin. These rains have triggered at least one landslide, according to a report published on ReliefWeb on September 6. At that time, 3 people were reported to have died and one person had been injured in the floods and landslide triggered by the rain.

By September 12, 2024, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this false-color image, the rivers along and through the Tarim Basin were filled with water and lined with green. In this type of image, vegetation looks green, sand and open land appears in tan tones, water looks blue, ice and snow are bright white, and clouds may be white or tinted with electric blue.

This Image of the Day also allows comparison with another false-color Terra MODIS image acquired of the same area on April 9, 2024. To compare September’s rain-swelled rivers with a with a more typical, dryer day in the Tarim Basin, simply click on the dates below the image.