The phrase
"outgoing radiation" refers to the energy that is emitted or sent out from the Earth and its atmosphere as heat or light. It is the opposite of incoming radiation, which is the energy that comes from the Sun to the Earth.
Outgoing radiation helps regulate the Earth's temperature and plays a key role in the Earth's climate system.
Full definition
This conveniently means there is no distortion to the amount
of outgoing radiation from the top of the atmosphere which would only upset the balance of radiation in and out.
The incoming and
outgoing radiation doesn't even know the other exists, it can't see it, it can't feel it, they have absolutely no effect on one another.
In either case the temperature is independent of the details of the temperature structure below, the key point is that the
total outgoing radiation must balance the incoming solar radiation.
The radiative forcing due to a change in concentration of CO2 is the change in balance between incoming and
outgoing radiation caused by the change in CO2 concentration.
Rather, attempts are made to estimate the differences and trends over time between incoming and
outgoing radiation so as to calculate an energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
It has to keep supplying the kinetic energy required to maintain atmospheric height and it has to still be warm enough to match
outgoing radiation with incoming radiation from an external source.
The answer is yes, it slightly raises the location
of outgoing radiation to space, and thus the lapse rate times the slight increase in altitude would raise the ground temperature.
Lindzen and Choi (2009), slightly revised as Lindzen & Choi (2011), used measurements of sea surface temperature in the tropics and satellite measurements of
outgoing radiation from 2000 to 2010 in an attempt to determine climate sensitivity, ultimately concluding that sensitivity is less than 1 °C for doubled atmospheric CO2.
My own prediction is that, as temperatures fail to increase over the next five years, attention will turn to Ray Ladbury's «bite» — the resonant absorption of
outgoing radiation by CO2 and H2O in the radiation spectrum viewed from space.
What happens at the «top of atmosphere» — the level
where outgoing radiation leaves for space, not itself a very easy concept — is the restoration of equilibrium, the increase in temperature that, through Helmholtz - Boltzmann at the Earth's brightness temperature 255K, restores the balance between incoming and outgoing energies.
I get that incoming and
outgoing radiation energy must balance and that radiation is the only way the Earth could come to equilibrium with the Sun and space.
In contrast to this, the calculated TOA
outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zero feedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models.
Absolute values of the difference for realistic cases are less than 0.05 W / m ^ 2 / K, which is not significant for climate studies that employ regressions of
outgoing radiation against temperature.
A recent paper by Lindzen and Choi in GRL (2009)(LC09) purported to demonstrate that climate had a strong negative feedback and that climate models are quite wrong in their relationships between changes in surface temperature and corresponding changes in
outgoing radiation escaping to space.
Lacis points out that
only outgoing radiation can balance the global energy budget of the Earth; as clearly the convection and conduction ends at the boundary of the atmosphere.
iii) The failure of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) to show that there was any increased atmospheric blocking of
outgoing radiation following short term troposphere warming episodes.
Therefore in a situation where the incoming radiation is greater than the outgoing, this must be a symptom of a change in the system (
i.e. outgoing radiation is being converted to heat) and isn't the mechanism that actually instigates the change.
The frequencies at which
outgoing radiation originate have not changed that much - it's mostly the height of the atmosphere from which they are radiated that changes.