Flying directly through thick plumes of smoke may seem more harrowing than exciting. But for members of the CAMP2Ex science team, the chance to fly a P-3 Orion straight through clouds of smoke billowing off fires from Borneo this week was too good an opportunity to pass up.
CAMP2Ex stands for the Cloud, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes in the Philippines Experiment. The 2, by the way, is silent.
It’s a field campaign based out of Clark in the Philippines, flying our P-3, a Learjet and collaborating with researchers on the research vessel Sally Ride to understand how tiny particles in the atmosphere affect cloud formations and monsoon season.
The tiny aerosol particles we’re looking at don’t just come from smoke. Aerosol particles also come from pollution, billowing dust and sea salt from the ocean. They can have an outsized effect on weather and climate, seeding clouds that bring rain and altering how the atmosphere absorbs the Sun’s heat.
The smoke we were flying Monday came from peat fires, burning through the soil. That’s pretty unusual — the last time Borneo had these kind of fires was in 2015, so it was a rare opportunity to sample the chemistry of the smoke and find out what’s mixing with the air.
The planes are loaded with instruments to learn more about aerosol particles and the makeup of clouds, like this high-speed camera that captures images of the particles in flight.
One instrument on the plane collects droplets of cloud water as the plane flies through them, and on the ground, we test how acidic and what kind of particles form the cloud drops.
All of these measurements are tools in improving our understanding of the interaction between particles in the air and clouds, rainfall and precipitation in the Pacific Ocean.
Learn more about the CAMP2Ex field campaign, here!
“It is a noble and beautiful spectacle to see man raising himself, so to speak, from nothing by his own exertions; dissipating, by the light of reason, all the thick clouds in which he was by nature enveloped; mounting above himself; soaring in thought even to the celestial regions; like the sun, encompassing with giant strides the vast extent of the universe; and, what is still grander and more wonderful, going back into himself, there to study man and get to know his own nature, his duties and his end.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (via philosophybits)
The Jolly Roger or “the pirate flag”, often also skull flag, is the
black flag of pirate ships. It is also called Black Jack, in reference
to the British Union Jack. The origin of the name Jolly Roger is
unknown. Some believe it is a corruption of the Indian pirate Ali Rajah,
whose name was pronounced by the British Olly Roger, but it may also
derive from the French joli rouge (pretty red), as the first pirates
hoisted a blood-red flag as a sign that they would all kill if the crew
of the booty ship did not surrender immediately. It is said that Calico
Jack Rackham
(Flag Calico Jack Rackhams (* 1682; † 1720))
used a black flag with a skull for the first time (variant
with crossed cutlasses), but this is not certain. The classic motif of
the Jolly Roger, a skull with two crossed bones, was first used by the
Breton pirate Emanuel Wynne around 1700.
(Flag Emanuel Wynnes (late 17th century, early 18th century))
The flag of Henry Every,
who sailed for the last time in 1696, is depicted with a skull in
profile, bandana and earring, over crossed bones.
( Flag Henry Every (* 1653; † 1696))
However, neither a
skull in profile nor bandana or earring can be found elsewhere on flags
or other heraldic symbols of the time. And although earrings, especially
made of gold, were not uncommon among sailors (the wearer hoped that he
would be paid a Christian funeral from the proceeds of the earring), it
was not until the late 19th century that bandana and earring became
popular details of artistic pirate depictions, starting with the
illustrated stories Howard Pyles (1853-1911).
On “Blackbeard”
Edward Thatch’s flag is a skeleton holding an hourglass and a spear in
its hands, with a bleeding heart next to it. This means that the soul
now belongs to death (skeleton). The hourglass is supposed to show the
victims that their time has expired. The spear promises a quick end, the
bleeding heart a particularly cruel/painful death.
(Flag Blackbeards (* 1680; † 1718) )
The skull with
the crossed bones and the hourglass were - taken from older Vanitas and
Memento Mori representations - widely used motifs in cemeteries. A
proof can be found in the graphic cycle “The four stages of cruelty” by
William Hogarth, published in 1751: On the third picture the skull
motive with the crossed bones is found, which decorates a grave.
In 1724 Jolly Roger was first mentioned in Captain Charles Johnson’s biographical collection A General History of the Pyrates.
Other Flags are:
(Flag Thomas Tews († 1695))
(Flag Stede Bonnets (* 1688; † 1718))
(Flag Bartholomew Roberts (* 1682; † 1722) his first flag)
(Roberts second flag)
The blood-red flag (guess)
There
is an assumption that before the Jolly Roger a blood-red flag was used
as a pirate symbol. This is supported by the fact that, until piracy
arose in the 16th and 17th centuries, the red flag was considered a
quarantine flag and had the meaning “Attention, we may have a disease on
board that will kill anyone who approaches us”. And the pirates wanted
to be deadly on approach. In addition, the quarantine flag received a
swallowtail in almost every seafaring nation in the 17th century,
according to the thesis, in order to rule out confusion with pirates. In
any case, the British navy prohibited the flying of exclusively red
flags in the Arabian Sea, ships with such flags were treated as pirates;
therefore the flags of Bahrain and Qatar still have their jagged shape
today. In 1694, the Admiralty had ordered British buccaneers to fly the
red flag. When the war against Spain ended in 1714, many of the then
superfluous buccaneers went into business for themselves and hijacked
British ships on their own account while retaining their red flag.
According to other sources, the early pirates carried two flags, one of
which they hoisted as needed: the red flag was the sign of not taking
prisoners (i.e. killing them all) and the black flag of taking prisoners
for ransom. Therefore, the red flag was even more feared than the
normal black flag, so joli rouge was a euphemism.
Asian pirate flags
The
Jolly Roger, on the other hand, was unknown to East Asian pirates.
Around 1810 there were six large groups of pirates in the South China
Sea who marked their ships with red and black, but also white, green,
blue and yellow flags.
A. Konstam, R. M. Kean, Pirates. Predators of the Sea (New York 2007)
