If you were responsible for allocating climate research funding, what would you most like to see studied?

Oh, there are several areas I think could be improved. Your list is good, to add another couple:

- aerosol forcing (a terrible shame Glory failed to launch...)

- (really just elaborating on your #4) deep ocean content monitoring

As to which I would prioritize, perhaps whichever contributes the largest uncertainty factor to estimating further climate changes. Aerosols and clouds, in this case.

I would also think that climatic effects on weather trends would be important as well, mainly exactly how we would expect storm frequency to change and the hydrological cycle to change as well. Knowing this information could greatly help us in adapting to climate change.

I'm biased, because it's my area of research, but I think GPS meteorology provides a lot of bang for the buck. I'd love to see a dense network of GPS receivers established around the world, and mounted on buoys in the oceans. This would not only give us (eventually) information about how the distribution of water vapor throughout the atmosphere is changing, if the data could be accessed in real-time it would greatly improve numerical weather forecast models. These same sensors (at least the ground-based ones) can be used for real-time earthquake warnings and studies of plate motion.

Additionally GPS radio occultation should eventually provide an independent and accurate measure of global temperature.

Not sure if this counts under 'climate', but if it does then I would say the theory of glacial movement and current state of glaciers in major areas like Greenland.

Gravitational influences sounds interesting too. I'm assuming you are referring to Milankovic cycles, but it would be interesting if there were other effects caused by gravitational anomalies, even if they are only small effects.

2. The role of clouds.

If we truly understand the nature of clouds as a forcing or feedback (or both?), we could more accurately assess climate sensitivity to increased CO2. To me, that's the most important question.

As well, I would allocate money to the study of cloud formation which is part of the role of clouds with cosmic rays as a factor as well as relative humidity. As a matter of fact, studying the entire evaporation, precipitation and cloud formation cycle would be the overall goal.

Like the GPS meteorologist before me, I admit bias (I'm in environmental health).

I would research ways to control the spread of tropical parasites and disease due to global warming. Maybe study whether fast-tracking eradication of tropical diseases we're already close to eradicating, like guinea worm disease, before they potentially spread from global warming, might save money in the long run.

I would study The Arctic.

I'd save the money and study the delusional attibutes of the progressive mind, to understand why they jump on bandwagons for a cause and defend it to near death when its easy to prove its a hoax.