But you will find that OHC follows
the net radiant flux at TOA quite closely.
Net radiant flux is planetary warming upward by convention.
Oceans gained energy to 1998 — pretty much in line with changes in ERBS
net radiant flux.
The point of Wong et al is that the ocean heat content follows
net radiant flux at TOA.
Radiation transfers heat across different scales at different optical thicknesses for different frequencies;
the net radiant flux depends more on temperature variations that occur over distances on the order of a unit of optical thickness, so the net flux can be through smaller - scale temperature variations.
Not exact matches
When optical thickness is large, the
net flux will tend to be small, but the
flux will vary with lapse rate (according to the corresponding Planck function «lapse rate») and a sufficiently sharp change in that lapse rate could lead to some significant
flux convergence or divergence at that level (
net radiant heating or cooling).
F — f (T) is a
net flux and it does not care where its
radiant energy goes.
A positive
net trend in
radiant flux at TOA is defined as planetary warming.
Net radiant energy
flux from the plane of the detector in the absence of the detector and box would the vector sum of Irradiances (= Emittance for a collimated beam).
It seems pretty much accounted for by a combination of solar cycle and
net toa
radiant flux changes.
Natural or anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere induces a «radiative forcing» ΔF, defined by IPCC (2001: ch.6.1) asa change in
net (down minus up)
radiant - energy
flux at the tropopause in response to a perturbation.