I'll start by only considering a one - dimensional case - the vertical (because that's the primary direction to think about when we're looking at ocean -
atmophere fluxes).
So the effectie residence time of the combined system is what is important, and that is more onthe order of hundreds of years — or indeed, thousands, if we are talking about the residence time inthe combined surface ocean /
atmophere / biosphere, vs. the deep ocean.
The second game in the series takes all of this and ramps it up ten fold, with
the atmophere being overwhelming at times.
This is a very different notion than that of a model of radiative absorption and emission in
the atmophere, which is a very specific physical process.
Since the extra heat, mainly in the the oceans is the equivalent of warming
the atmophere by 42 °C, if this heat had been extracted from the atmosphere to warm the oceans we would have seen a drop in Air temperatures of a similar scale: ≈ 40 °C or so of atmospheric cooling.
«If CO2 WERE a main player, then I suspect that it would be from the TOP of
the atmophere down, instead of the popular bottom of the atmosphere up.»