What are the major contributors to the amount of infra-red emitted by the earth? From the answers from an earlier question, I learned that most of the solar radiation gained by the earth system (atmosphere, surface, and inner mass) is re-radiated back into space in the form of infra-red. This balance of incoming solar radiation and outgoing infra-red radiation depends on the earth system's infra-red radiation 'equation' - that is, how it takes 'in' the various forms of solar radiation and converts them into infra-red. At least, that's the best I can make out of this article Earth's Energy Budget and this accompanying chart.



My question is what are the principal components of this 'equation'? I imagine the percentage of water in the atmosphere and on the surface of the earth, the mean absorptive ability of the non-water surfaces of the earth, and, what is most mysterious to me, what is the 'factor' of infra-red production by different surface materials. I imagine this is all highly technical and finely detailed in large elaborate models, but are there 'big levers' that represent most of the infra-red radiative effect? Where I am 'headed with' this, of course, is if there is a practical way to increase this radiation back to space that can make a positive difference on global warming (ie net positive radiation into space after accounting for increased greenhouse gases back radiation)? And I imagine there is not, given we are not trying that.
It depends on the wavelength.



The figure shows the most absorbing species between 6 and 16 µm for a U.S. standard tropical atmosphere (Note: this figure does NOT include the Earth's surface!).  Absorption data is taken from Anderson et. al (1986) and simulations are performed with the open-source Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator (ARTS; Eriksson et al., 2011).  The plotting was carried out with LaTeX and pgfplots.  ARTS is open-source and includes the Anderson et al. data, so you can try different wavelengths for yourself.

Depending on wavelength, we have dominant absorption from H₂O, O₃, CO₂, N₂O, CH₄, and others.

I have also uploaded a PDF version (PDF, 117.68 mm × 228.21 mm, 5.1 MiB) for higher-resolution viewing.