Title: Aerosols: Smoke and Mirrors of the Climate System Abstract: Aerosols are sometimes referred to as the most confounding cog in the climate system when it comes to prognosticating the future of the Earth’s climate. Their interaction with clouds makes the problem truly wicked. Here we look at a very small sub-set of the issue – that of the effect of absorbing aerosol above cloud, a persistent feature over the southeastern Atlantic Ocean off the west coast of Africa. It is also judicious to admit that we really do not know the global pre-industrial aerosol field and so cannot honestly pin down an appropriate value for the anthropogenic, i.e. current minus pre-industrial, aerosol radiative forcing.