New Paper: Recent Energy Balance of Earth (Knox and Douglass)

[WeatherRusty]

Ok so let me try and put it this way.

The surface is ALWAYS re-radiating the SW radiation from the sun as LW radiation which warms the air of the lower troposphere. Thus we say that the surface warms the atmosphere.

But conduction will occur in the direction of whichever is cooler the surface or the atmosphere. Usually the surface is physically warmer than the air, but not always. So conduction of heat could go either way.

Now, speaking in NET terms because of the LW radiation released by the surface, the NET energy transfer is away from the surface and towards the atmosphere (and then from the atmosphere to space).

However, I still think that if you break this net process down temporarily and spatially it is possible that in a major heatwave at high latitudes (for example the 850mb temperature is well above zero over part of the arctic ocean currently) the atmosphere would actually warm the surface. The surface is receiving no radiation from the sun.. so it can't be radiating very much heat. Then you have very warm air which is rapidly conducting heat towards to the surface (and causing melt of the Bering strait currently). So at least in this isolated example, the atmosphere is warming the surface.

Exactly...

Now let's consider the case of the whole Earth and global warming. As you say, in net terms we can conclude that the surface warms the atmosphere. So, as the surface warms so does the atmosphere.

Now we can ask what warms the surface? Obviously the Sun, but also Earth's own atmosphere. The surface absorbs 163W/m^2 SW radiation from the Sun, but it radiates 358W/m^2 in the infrared. How can that be. The difference is due to the atmospheric greenhouse effect radiating 340W/M^2 down toward the surface because the atmosphere has a temperature. The surface is receiving twice as much energy from it's own atmosphere as directly from the Sun! These figures are time and spacially averaged values.

SEE HERE

SEE HERE

As you can see, ocean cycles add nothing to this energy balance over time when considering the whole Earth condition. When SST's cool, the Earth's net energy absorption is INCREASED.

[WeatherRusty]

Exactly

I keep trying to re-hash this point over and over again, and yet its like people have been brainwashed ........ "oceans cannot remove heat from the atmosphere"....

The oceans effect on temperature is of higher confidence than CO2 warming actually.

My previous posts have actually been a response to this. Ocean's don't remove heat from the atmosphere because the atmosphere holds very little heat. The atmosphere looses energy to space in one 24 hour period by many orders of magnitude greater than that absorbed by the oceans.

This miss-perception comes about because you think the slight warming induced by CO2 directly to the atmosphere is negated by much greater magnitude changes in SST. In isolated short term of course that is the case. However, the oceans are warmed by radiation from both the Sun and the atmosphere. Since this value is increasing over time because of our adding CO2 to the atmosphere, the energy content of the oceans must increase. Since the surface is what warms the atmosphere, over time a higher ocean heat content will lead to a warmer atmosphere.