Some questions to Gerhard Kramm et al.

Professor Gerhard Kramm at the University of Alaska stands out as one of few meteorologists who publicly express doubts about the validity of the so called greenhouse effect, most recently done in a paper coauthored with Ralph Dlugi, where in the abstract they state that

"..it is time to acknowledge that the atmospheric greenhouse effect and especially its climatic impact are based on meritless conjectures."

 The main argument of the paper appears to be that the temperature difference of 33 degrees C between the measured surface temperature and that of a hypothetical earth without an atmosphere modelled as a blackbody in equilibrium with the incoming solar radiation, lacks rationale and that therefore any explanation of this temperature difference, for example as a result of greenhouse gases, also lacks rationale. 

The very definition of the greenhouse effect seems to be elusive. There can be no doubt that the canonical version not only attempts to explain why the surface temperature is higher than the hypothetical equilibrium temperature but also why the temperature at higher altitudes, for example at the tropopause, is lower.

On Wikipedia you can find the following information on Prof. Kramm

"Since 2003 Kramm has served as an associate faculty at the College of Natural Science and Mathematics, UAF, where he has taught atmospheric dynamics, atmospheric radiation, physics of the atmospheric boundary layer, and turbulence."

Given this I thought it would be interesting to ask the following questions to Prof. Kramm:

1. Where is the TOA ("Top of the Atmosphere") and why is it situated where it is?

2. Is the difference in average temperature between the surface and the tropopause fictitious, and if not, what is the reason for its existence?

3. To your knowledge, does there exist any "sophisticated radiative transfer model" moving beyond the simple formulas that you can find in for example Goody and Yung chapter 9, and in that case where can I find it?