Many Thanks to Kevin Trenberth for Being Open-Minded

I suppose this comment was supposed to be sarcastic, and that you simply omitted the tag, since the Earth receives, at the equator, solar input for only about 12 hours per day, and at the poles there are periods when all but no solar input is received for some 3 months, yet the Earth radiates away energy 24/7 some 365 days a year. The differences between input and output are fundamentally different.
Weather is caused by the constrast of conditions. which of course drives the heat pump form equator to poles, such that if the energy budget was truly as set out in the K & T energy budget, the weather on planet Earth would be very different

@Brandon Gates
You claim the atmosphere (~30 m near the surface) is at a (mean) much lower temperature that the surface (2.8 vs 5.8 deg C). This is a correct radiation calculation but Figure 2.5 of Houghton’s ‘Physics of Atmospheres’ shows that there is zero such temperature difference.
He stated this for a grey body atmosphere, bear with me on that. The reason is lapse rate convection and advection, particularly the condensation and evaporation over most of the Earth’s surface. In other words he knew then, but has apparently forgotten. that the surface does not participate in the two-stream radiation equilibrium in the atmosphere.
There is no such temperature difference; none has ever been proven experimentally, ergo the Enhanced GHE does not exist.
@Trick
The reason for the above is that the S-B equation predicts a Potential Energy Flux, not real. This is because when Poynting Vectors add as vectors, on average the surface Emittance in the non self-absorbed GHG bands mutually annihilate with the Emittance in the same wavelengths from the atmosphere in the opposite direction. – VECTOR SUMMATION. The only net IR is ~40 W/m^2 in the atmospheric window and ~23 W/m^2 in the non self-absorbed H2O bands, absorbed and emitted over kilometres, little warming.
This excruciating failure to understand radiative physics has destroyed any pretence by Atmospheric Science that it is a Science. We engineers have been using View Factors in radiation calculations for a Century to solve real Radiation Problems, in my case rolling mills,casting plants, paint ovens, ovens for glueing cars. We get it right; Atmospheric Science gets it wrong. View Factors are the geometry of the VECTOR SUMMATION of Irradiances, proven experimentally for a Century. Trenberth, poor soul, got it WRONG!

AlecM,

You claim the atmosphere (~30 m near the surface) is at a (mean) much lower temperature that the surface (2.8 vs 5.8 deg C).

No. I claimed that downwelling IR at the surface implies an atmosphere which is on balance cooler than the surface. (Note: that’s 2.8 vs 15.8. I make typos too …)

[Houghton] stated this for a grey body atmosphere, bear with me on that.

I understand the distinction between grey and black body. For 1st year conceptual back-of-napkin approximations, treating the atmosphere as a black body is close enough since emissivity is effectively unity at the relevant wavelengths.

The reason is lapse rate convection and advection, particularly the condensation and evaporation over most of the Earth’s surface.

Lapse rate is related to ideal gas law; obviously a gas changing pressure will — all else being equal — change temperature. All else is not equal of course, but neglecting other energy transfers a rising parcel will cool off as it goes. When it comes back down it will compress and heat back up. Net energy change = 0.
Think of a rock thrown skyward having just shy of the same kinetic energy when it returns to ground, the difference being interaction with the atmosphere which it gained back in thermal energy. Net energy change = 0.
Of course, the rock to start upward in the first place it must have gained the kinetic energy from somewhere, in this case your arm. The reason the atmosphere heats up at the surface is also due to an external energy source, in this case solar energy having been absorbed by the surface and thence transferred to the air via sensible, latent and radiant heat. Now, while our rock lost some kinetic energy on its ballistic arc, it also did lose some of the thermal energy it gained by interacting with the atmosphere as it went. So too does an air parcel as it rises and falls.
Lapse rate does not impart a NET change in energy over a full up/down cycle. Both the rock and atmosphere lose energy due to radiative transfer out they rise and fall. On balance, air comes back just a tad cooler than when it left because of that radiative loss. The rock probably nets more thermal energy than it loses … all analogies do break down at some point.
The latent heat transfers in the water cycle are a somewhat different matter because now phase changes are involved. Evaporation at the surface is endothermic, leading to most of the cooling at ground level. As convection carries it to altitude, lapse rate kicks in which dissipates much of the absorbed energy. When the moist air cools sufficiently the water condenses back to liquid, an exothermic process. The surrounding atmosphere gains most of what the surface lost from the latent heat transfer, precipitation comes back down even cooler than when it left. Not being a gas at that point, lapse rate isn’t as significant — liquid precipitation reaches the ground faster than the warmer air at lower altitudes can transfer energy to it.
In sum, at the surface, the water cycle is the dominant cooling mechanism. On balance, mind. The GHG effect is mostly a midldling altitude effect, usually cited as a few kilometers. Above that altitude, GHGs have a net cooling effect since, as we should all know, good absorbers are also good emitters. The closer a radiatively active molecule gets to TOA, the higher the probability that upwelling radiation will make it back out to deep space and the lower probability that downwelling will again strike the surface.

In other words he knew then, but has apparently forgotten. that the surface does not participate in the two-stream radiation equilibrium in the atmosphere.

It has not been “forgotten”. Latent and sensible heat transfers from the surface to the mid-troposphere are both represented quite clearly, dead center bottom of the commonly cited energy budget diagrams. Everything I think I understand about this stuff comes from the very fact that none of it has been forgotten … quite the opposite, it’s been extensively studied and discussed in the primary literature far and beyond what is found in college texts. How else would the texts come to be written (and revised) in the first place?

There is no such temperature difference; none has ever been proven experimentally, ergo the Enhanced GHE does not exist.

Negative. Cooler bodies emit less radiative energy than warmer ones. The radiative calculations yield up effective temperature, not actual temperature. Effective temperature is how warm (or cool if you like, but everything is warm relative to 0 K) an object appears when observed from a distance via emitted radiation. Since ground-based instruments “see” the entire thickness of the atmosphere in clear sky conditions, their sensors pick up an effectively averaged temperature reading through the entire column of atmosphere they are observing. Those measurements are not dead-on of course because of Rayleigh scattering, particulates, water droplets, high altitude ice crystals and the like. Cloudy sky conditions are even trickier, especially when attempting to do global averaging since they mask the upper atmosphere from ground-based instruments.
Did I mention observations? Yes I did. For empirical data, I refer you to one of the most excellent, informative and interesting climate related posts I have seen on any blog in recent memory, “A First Look at SURFRAD” by Willis Eschenbach: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/25/a-first-look-at-surfrad/
I have downloaded complete datasets for four of the observing stations with observations ranging from 1995 to present. (Las Vegas only goes back to ’98, the other three to ’95.) I have summed up the observed downward and upward IR observations, the results are:
dw_ir uw_ir avg_temp station
------ ------ ------ ------
288.17 372.62 11.92 colorado
319.65 371.02 11.35 illinois
303.95 426.43 18.64 las vegas
347.79 402.11 16.70 missouri
------ ------ ------ ------
314.89 393.05 14.65 average
272.98 288.54 effective temp (K)
-0.17 15.39 effective temp (C)
0.74 effective - actual temp (C)
The average upwelling IR is within 3 W/m^2 of the 390 published in the energy budget diagram in MikeB’s
December 2, 2014 at 6:46 am post. Downwelling does not fare as well, being on the low side of 324 W/m^2 by 9. Yet for 4 stations at roughly similar, therefore non-representative of the entire planet, the results are compellingly close to the expected, globally representative, average values. The key takeaway is that these observations conform to the theoretical relationship. (I’ll spare you most of my standard lecture on “proof” not applying to induction. Suffice it to say that proof is for logic and math, not non-trivial empirical science.)
There are a few other points of interest in these observational data. Note the good correlation between UWIR and average temperature. S-B trumphs again, predicted temperature is inside 1 K of observed. However, note that DWIR does not follow the exact same relationship. To wit, the ratio of down/up are slightly different for each station:
0.77 colorado
0.86 illinois
0.71 las vegas
0.86 missouri
Think about the molecule in the atmosphere which is the most dominant IR emitter on an instantaneous basis — ON BALANCE — and then review your statements about observation not conforming to theory. Ask yourself why any other IR emitter, spectral differences aside, would follow some vague and ill-defined (or just plain garbled) alternative laws of physics.

MikeB
December 2, 2014 at 11:38 am
//////////////////////////////////////////////
”Richard Verney
Energy in is Not received in bursts. It is received 24/7. Do you understand that? When it is night, somewhere on the Earth it is day. The energy-in is continuous.”
Mike, Richard is right and you are wrong. Energy is received at earth’s surface in an intermittent cycle, and as 71% of the planet’s surface is ocean (an extreme SW selective surface not a “near blackbody”) this cycle of illumination is critical and its effects cannot be modelled wit averages. Here are five simple rules for SW translucent materials that show why –
http://i59.tinypic.com/10pdqur.jpg
– for our deep SW translucent oceans using averages for solar insolation gives the wrong answer. Utterly wrong.
”Genghis
The ocean energy cycle, whatever you think that is, has nothing to do with energy-in, energy-out or Earth’s energy budget.”
Again Genghis is right and you are wrong. See the diagram above. Further to this have another look at Trenberth’s ludicrous energy budget cartoon. It simply shows “surface” absorbing DWLWIR not land and ocean. Empirical experiment clearly shows that incident LWIR has no effect on the cooling rate of water that is free to evaporatively cool. That would mean that diagram is wrong for 71% of our planet’s surface.
”Alberta Slim
Good question. This is one of the basics.
See … http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/””
Steel green house works –
http://i43.tinypic.com/2wrlris.jpg
– but only when you separate the surfaces with vacuum. The basic maxwellian physics of this simple experiment cannot be applied to a moving gas atmosphere.
”AlecM,
I know physicists have been wrong for 70 years, now take your medication”
Physicists haven’t been wrong for 70 years, the two stream approximation works well for objects that are not conductively coupled and don’t cool by evaporation. It is climastrologists who tried to use this type of radiative physics within the moving gas Hohlrumn of the atmosphere that need the medication.

Crispin 10:31am: “…gives the wrong answer for radiative calculations.”
Not for the Trenberth et. al. cartoon MikeB shows at 6:46am, the sun was “on” for the earth continuously over the 4 years of CERES data shown therein, there is no shade in space for earth system. That’s why they call it a solar constant – the sun is a continuous wave. Konrad’s experiments are irrelevant to that cartoon and genre.

Nowhere did I EVER suggest that energy input to earth is in bursts. In fact I have been singularly isolated in my insistence that the sun pours in 136X +/- 90 W/m^2 24 / 7 continually; NOT for one quarter of the time at a 342 W/m^2 rate.
And KT’s energy budget, includes bi-direction radiant energy fluxes, as well as at least an upward thermal flux “HEAT” (noun). See that 24 W/m^2 “thermals” and the 78 “Latent heat”
So I believe it would be entirely proper to show the poleward transfers of “Heat” via convection (ocean currents).

warrenlb
“4) Energy into Earth’s System from the Sun, is, well thermal radiation from the sun, ONLY. Energy out from Earth’s system is thermal radiation as well, ONLY. ”
Well, not really. Some of the energy from the sun leaves as reflected electromagnetic radiation (light) that is not in the IR band.
Some parts of your comment which follow are also not correct in that energy can leave the system by any frequency of radiation available. Sunlight is reflected off clouds and this is correctly indicated in the cartoon.
Sunlight is also reflected off the surface – also correctly noted in the cartoon. That is not IR yet it leaves the system.
The IR radiation is what leaves after absorbed incident sunlight is absorbed, not all incoming energy.
Of course this correction dramatically affects the calculated IR radiation requirement and also the effective radiating height (if the conceptual error was carried that far).