Rolling sand dunes in the expansive Rub’ al Khali desert on the southern Arabian Peninsula are pictured in this radar image from the Sentinel-1A satellite.
Rub’ al Khali – also known at the ‘Empty Quarter’ – is part of the greater Arabian Desert. Its sand dunes reach up to 250 m in height and in some areas are interspersed with hardened flat plains, evident at this bottom half of this image. These plains are what is left of shallow lakes that existed thousands of years ago, formed by monsoon-like rains and runoff.
Today, the region is considered to be ‘hyper-arid’, with precipitation rarely exceeding 35 mm a year and regular high temperatures around 50°C.
Rub’ al Khali has experienced major desertification over the past 2000 years. Until about the year 300 AD, trade caravans crossed what is today an impassable wasteland.
In the upper part of this image, we can see a road snaking through the remote desert and leading to Kharkhir (not pictured), a Saudi village near the border with Yemen.
Sentinel-1 is a two-satellite radar mission for Europe’s Copernicus program. The first satellite of the pair, Sentinel-1A, was launched in April. The satellite is still being commissioned to prepare for routine operations.
This image is featured on the Earth from Space video program.
Image credit: ESA
The city of Jeddah’s seaport on Saudi Arabia’s western coast is pictured in this image from the Kompsat-2 satellite.
The second largest city in the country, Jeddah has a population of over five million people. The city is a gateway to Islam’s holiest city of Mecca, which lies about 60 km to the east, as well to the holy city of Medina, about 320 km north.
It is also an important commercial hub, with its port located in the middle of an important shipping route between east and west. Zooming in, we can see some large container vessels in the port.
Near the bottom of the image, the large circles are the tanks of an oil refinery. The oil industry comprises about 45% of Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product, and 90% of export earnings. Saudi Arabia is the world’s number-one oil exporter, and therefore plays a major role in the global energy industry. Its policies on the production and export of oil, natural gas and petroleum products have a major impact on the energy market, as well as the global economy.
The Red Sea’s coral reefs are visible off the coast. In fact, this is one of the few places along this coastline with a gap in the reef, enabling large vessels to approach the coast.
This image, also featured in the Earth from Space video program, was acquired on 17 March 2013 by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s Kompsat-2 satellite.
Photo credit: KARI/ESA
Tapping into fossil ground water, Saudi Arabia has been steadily developing agricultural fields using center pivot irrigation. A remarkable example is in the Wadi As-Sirhan Basin in northwest Saudi Arabia. In the 1984 Landsat image (top), no fields are yet present. By 2000, ASTER showed extensive farming activity (middle); vegetation is bright red. And by 2011, the ASTER image shows several areas where wall-to-wall fields were developed, each about 1 km in diameter (bottom). The images cover an area of 19.5 x 33 km, and are located at 30.5 degrees north latitude, 38 degrees east longitude.
Photo credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
