Abstract
The “natural greenhouse effect” is one of the fundamentals of traditional climatology. To maintain the outgoing thermal radiation from the Earth's surface in equilibrium with solar irradiation requires the mathematical construct of back-radiation emitted by some infrared-active constituents in the atmosphere; otherwise, the convection and evapotranspiration flows from the surface and the corresponding back flows cannot be explained in view of the net radiation budget. To surmount the biased view of all-dominating radiative processes in the atmosphere, an alternative approach should take into account the effects of gravity on the atmosphere. An atmospheric temperature effect is completely determined by the mean global temperature at the surface, the radiative-equilibrium temperature of the earth/atmosphere system (in an altitude of some kilometres) and the pseudoadiabatic temperature lapse rate. There is no separate conservation law for radiation at the Earth's surface but only one for energy. In the unequal competition with atmospheric thermal radiation, solar radiation has an unique position relating to the transformation into heat in the absorbing material.
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