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Climate feedbacks in the upper troposphere are some of the largest remaining uncertainties in quantifying the climatic response to anthropogenic forcing. With collaborators at the University of Washington and University of Reading, Gettelman has continued to explore the radiation balance of the Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL) and the implications for understanding upper tropospheric water vapor feedbacks in observations and in climate models. Current work last year has investigated differences in humidity between observations and models and is continuing to analyze co-variations of clouds, humidity and temperature to try to understand climate sensitivity. This work suggests that humidity in the upper troposphere increases as the surface temperature increases. Significantly, CAM simulations show a similar picture. Much of this work exploits newly available satellite sensors, in particular from NASA EOS satellites (Aqua and Aura). Extensive work with AIRS and data validation has continued this year. Validation of EOS Aura data (MLS and eventually HIRDLS) is progressing and has led to numerous collaborations on the validation side with in situ data: University of Idaho, NASA-JPL, NOAA, Kyoto University, CNRS (France), IAP-Beijing, as well as with several other groups working with the data, including the University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins University.