Interesting

http://www.aip.org/history/powerpoints/GlobalWarming_Oreskes.ppt

Some sea temp stuff
arry Lu (20:11:48) :

” George E. Smith (18:08:33) :
Bob you are so charitable. LWIR warms the top few cm. I figure that atmospheric (tropospheric anyway) LWIR can hardly be significant below about 3-4 microns…; so lets be generous and say it might warm the top 10 microns. How much of that energy remains following the prompt evaporation from that hot skin.”

Have you not forgotten conduction? It operates in all directions!

So we have the top few cm heated by sw and lw and a few 10s meters down heated by UV
http://ies.jrc.ec.europa.eu/uploads/fileadmin/Documentation/Reports/Global_Vegetation_Monitoring/EUR_2006-2007/EUR_22217_EN.pdf

So the surface cm is absorbing a percentage of the SW (as does each cm of the deeper water except the percentage is of a progressively smaller maximum) plus all the LW re-radiated from GHGs.

The surface is also receiving LW from the layer under the surface and radiating LW down to this lower layer. Because the surface is hotter this will average out to an energy transfer downwards.

So the hotter the surface the less the lower water energy will be radiated (lost) into the atmosphere. Less loss with the same SW TSI heating the lower layers will mean a hotter temperature.

Of course the surface is loosing heat via conduction in all directions radiation in all direction, and forced air convection upwards (sideways!)

However, The surface layer heating must effect the lower layer cooling in my books.


According to your diagram of energy buget:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/trenberth_mine_latest_big1.jpg

Only 169 w/m^2 of SW radiation gets absorbed (198w/m^2 hits the ground)
The back radiation from GHGs is 321 w/m^2 absorbed by the ground.

If 321W/m^2 is absorbed in the top layer and 169w/m^2 is absorbed in 10s meters the the top layer will be much warmer than the lower layers.

So is it not true that this top layer must control the temperature of the lower layers?