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[[image -- Four figures of the earth]]

The basic inference is that the ENSO phenomenon provides a crucial natural experiment to examine the nature of the feedbacks between ocean warming, clouds, water vapor, convection and ocean/atmosphere dynamics.

[[bold]]Fundamental Questions[[/bold]]
• Are the cirrus clouds over the warm oceans the fundamental thermostats that regulate SSTs in the tropical oceans?
• What are the relative roles of convention and thermodynamics in causing the super greenhouse effect over the warm pool (SST>27°C)?
• What are the relative roles of moisture transport by convection and vapor detrained by cirrus in the water vapor distribution of the troposphere?
• Why is there a near perfect anti correlation between the atmospheric plus cloud greenhouse effect and cloud shortwave forcing over the warm pool?
• What is the link between large-scale circulation, deep convection, and cirrus reflectivity in the western Pacific?

[[bold]]Why Are Drones the Ideal Platforms for this Program?[[/bold]]
The fundamental climate forcing is the net radiative fluxes at the tropopause altitudes and at the surface. The fundamental climate variable is the water vapor distribution from surface to at least up to 20km. We need high precision (within 1%) and high accuracy (1%) radiometric, microphysical, and

[[bold]]I-4[[/bold]]