Title: Transient Response to Aerosol Radiative Forcing and Implications for Hurricanes Dust aerosols and hurricane activity over the tropical Atlantic are anticorrelated during recent decades. It is not known whether this relation is causal or by what mechanism dust might alter hurricanes. It has been proposed that dust inhibits hurricane formation by reducing SST beneath the aerosol layer, and a few studies have estimated this cooling based upon the aerosol radiative forcing at the ocean surface. However, any reduction in ocean temperature is generally accompanied by a reduction in heat loss to the atmosphere. Air-sea heat exchange is approximately related to the air-sea temperature difference, so any full account of the ocean response to dust has to include the atmosphere. Here, we calculate the transient response of surface air and ocean temperature to aerosol radiative forcing. We use a simple model of the coupled ocean and atmosphere to illustrate the time scales and mechanisms of the temperature response to dust radiative forcing. We find that within a few weeks of aerosol forcing, the surface air and ocean temperature response are more strongly coupled to aerosol forcing at the top of atmosphere than the surface value. Moreover, the full adjustment to aerosol forcing depends upon the atmospheric longwave emissivity in addition to the ocean mixed layer depth and takes a few years. Consequently, a particularly dusty summer cannot significantly reduce SST and hurricane activity, because the ocean does not have time to respond significantly. However, dust transported across the Atlantic is observed to vary by as much as a factor of three on decadal time scales. Estimates based upon GCM simulations suggest that these dust variations are large enough to cause interdecadal variations in hurricane activity.